“No one’s ever done that before,” Madeline said over the phone. “He’s in deep trouble, I can tell already.”
Jane didn’t quite understand that last part, but she didn’t care. What had happened that afternoon was so strange as to seem unnatural; Jane had come home and taken cold medication because - she was sick, she had to be. There was something wrong with her. She didn’t even know him, she didn’t know anything about him except that he was a television psychic and that really should have been enough. Scratch that, the married should have been enough.
But it wasn’t.
Jane was so nervous during the first episode she almost couldn’t speak. They were in an old hotel that had apparently been the site of several mob murders, and Jane was continuously followed by loud pounding noises and flickering lights. She spent the whole time racing through her descriptions, flinching in fear, and when she got out of the front doors to find Elijah waiting for her, there was nothing she could do; she threw her arms around him and the show gained fifty thousand viewers. She hadn’t planned it, she hadn’t chosen it, she just suddenly found herself in his arms. His chest was solid and warm against her own and she pushed herself away before she started grinding like a teenager.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes so pale and serious that Jane couldn’t remember how to say “I’m fine,” couldn’t remember how to say anything. Later on, she learned that all the noises were a set up, a “one-time thing, promise” organized by Madeline to gain sympathy with the audience. Madeline hadn’t planned the hug though, and she complained bitterly about it over drinks after the shoot.
“Inspired, is what it was,” Madeline told her, words already slurred with wine. “Fan girls eat that kind of stuff up. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself, you sure you’re not an actress? Stop apologizing for touching my husband, you’re perfect.”
Elijah sat at the other end of the table throughout the night, not meeting Jane’s eye.
That was how it started, something as stupid as a hug. After that, the editors started cutting their footage together so that Jane was always glancing nervously at Elijah, or smiling softly over something he said. Madeline purposefully added a section at the end of the show where Elijah, Jane and Rocky discussed their findings, and Rocky was basically ordered to be silent throughout so that Jane and Elijah could make awkward conversation that apparently read as barely restrained passion when properly edited.
Jane knew it was weird, and yet she didn’t know how to address it. Off-camera, they barely spoke, and on-camera they said nothing personal or revealing, and yet the audience thought they were star-crossed lovers, only separated by propriety and Elijah’s evil wife. She Googled herself (on one particularly lonely evening) and found that people were writing stories about them, long and romantic and frequently pornographic works of fiction about her and Elijah running away together, or having illicit trysts in some haunted castle. There were a couple of threesomes involving Rocky, but Jane didn’t look at these. She didn’t read any of the stories. She read Elijah’s books instead. It had been over since the first moment she saw him, no use in fighting it now.
****
The entrance to Greenhaven was wide and pillared, marble stairs cracked with age and green with mildew. Jane made her way up them, turning to smile nervously at her camera operator. Scott was new, just came on a few episodes ago, and he was all business - an impatient wannabe-director with the world to prove. In the last episode, he had almost broken his neck trying to get a POV shot from a chandelier, and Madeline had shouted herself hoarse.
“This is the view a new resident would see when they were brought to Greenhaven,” Jane said, looking back toward the lens. If she let her gaze move into the distance she would be able to see Elijah standing in the parking lot, blond hair turning blood-gold against the sunset. “If they were from a wealthy family, that is. All this grandeur was supposed to make the upper-class and self-admitted residents feel comfortable, like they were walking into a hotel. There was a separate entrance for those who were committed involuntarily and it was a lot less welcoming.”
They paused outside the double doors, Jane taking a deep breath before going inside. It was a habit she had gotten into during the first season, and it had unfortunately become “her thing.” Someone had made a super-cut of all her deep breaths on youtube, and she didn’t want to think about why.
“Let’s go look around,” she said to the camera, pushing open the large double doors. Every show followed the same format, with Madeline checking the place out first and drawing up maps of the path everyone would take. A caretaker would usually go with her, making sure everything was unlocked and roping off any areas with too much structural damage. Jane was always the first one to go through, setting the scene with basic information about the building and any grisly incidents that occurred in particular rooms. She was followed shortly by Rocky, who took readings of heat and light, recording any unusual sounds or physical phenomena. Elijah went last, somehow sensing whatever horrible murder Jane had described and whatever strange happenings Rocky had recorded. Jane was certain it was all scripted, even though she’d never asked Elijah. Madeline basically told her what to say, so she didn’t think it would be any different with their psychic star.
The air inside Greenhaven was damp and stale with dust. There was still a little light coming in through the windows, but it cast slanted shadows across the floor, making the place seem even more unsettling. Soon the sun would set completely, and the only source of illumination would be the light from the camera and Jane’s weak headlamp.
“This is the waiting room,” Jane said, motioning to the large empty hall, stairs branching off toward the East and West wings. “A patient would be examined, checked in, their personal belongings would be taken up those stairs, there.” She looked around the barren room, now devoid of chairs or desks or any sort of decoration. Wallpaper was peeling like strips of skin form the walls, and the high ceiling made every step echo. Jane felt like she was on the inside of something rotten, something rotting.
“A lot of goodbyes were said here,” she murmured, almost jumping when Scott softly called her name. “What?”
“What?” Scott replied.
“You said my name.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Right.” Jane waved her hand, moving on. The rest of the crew was right outside those doors; she had obviously overheard one of them. “Okay. Keep rolling.”
They toured the bathroom on the first floor, where new patients would be washed and examined. “Legend has it, a patient strangled a doctor and a nurse in this shower on his first day at Greenhaven.” They went through the library on the second floor, where a patient had hung himself in 1963, and the nurse’s station where a murderous R.N. distributed poisoned medication to three unlucky patients. In one of the small, padded “restraint cells” the door slammed shut behind her, and Jane almost had a heart attack before Scott pulled it open again.
“The building’s settled,” Jane explained, convincing herself as much as Scott. “This happens all the time in old buildings. Especially if they were built in a hurry.”
Scott nodded, but his lips were pressed tightly together, and they stayed that way. The further inside they went, the sicker Jane started to feel. The floor beneath her was uneven (poor structure, Jane told herself) and she felt herself swaying as she walked. The sun had all but faded, the halls shrouded in darkness save for the thin beam of her headlamp, or the occasional flickering emergency light.
“We’ll do patients’ rooms on the third floor, then the East Wing surgery,” Jane said. “Okay?”
Scott said nothing, just pressed his lips together.
Climbing the stairs to the third floor was more difficult than it should have been. The dim light made it hard to see, and twice Jane caught her foot on the step, stumbling and nearly falling. The staircase seemed to go on and on, and each stair creaked beneath their weight, a groan that Jane could feel in the p
it of her stomach. Halfway up, Scott froze, hissing. “Did you see that?”
“What?” Jane looked around wildly.
The stairs were steep and narrow, with no room for anything to hide.
“It was on the wall, just there on the wall-”
“What was it, Scott?” Jane turned to look at her cameraman, but he was shaking his head. The camera was pointed at the floor, footage forgotten.
“It was this thing on the wall. It was - forget it. Whatever.”
He seemed almost angry having to explain it. Jane didn’t see anything, so she shrugged and kept walking. A spider, she told herself, a spider.
“Jane.”
“What is it? Is it the thing you saw?” She jerked to a halt, almost backing into Scott as she did so.
“What are you talking about?”
She turned again to look at Scott, his thin-lipped scowl.
“You said my name-” Somewhere below them, the stairs creaked. “Never mind. Let’s keep going.”
They took the stairs in silence after that. When they reached the third floor, Scott seemed to remember they had a television show to film, and pointed the camera back at her. A heavy metal door had been propped open at the top of the stairs, the only barrier between the patients’ rooms and the rest of Greenhaven.
“This floor was home to some of Greenhaven’s most violent patients,” Jane said, meeting Scott’s solemn eyes. “The door would usually be closed and locked when the nurses weren’t making their rounds. Many of these patients had been transferred from penitentiaries or committed some act of violence within the hospital itself.”
She stepped through, still looking back at Scott. Her cameraman had stopped on the staircase to get a wide shot of the floor, the rows of tiny open rooms that once had been locked tight.
“One notable case would be that of David Garrett, who twice-”
That was as far as she got, before the door slammed shut behind her.
****
It was the end of Jane’s second season, and the first and only time she and Elijah talked about it. They were on location in Fall River, just finished filming at the Lizzie Borden house, and flying home the next morning. Elijah’s room was right across the hotel hall from Jane’s, and Madeline had already left to catch an early meeting in L.A.. Rocky had gone out to the pub with the rest of the crew, but Jane had ordered room service (a luxury she still hadn’t quite gotten used to) and had a bath, and when she put the plates outside her door (because that was what they did in movies right?) she found Elijah just going into his room.
“Hi,” she said, before she forgot she was wearing a hotel bathrobe and had barely toweled off her hair.
He turned and he looked at her, and this look was only one in the long list of reasons she wanted him; when he looked at you, he made you feel seen.
“You gave drinks with the crew a miss, then?” Elijah asked, standing in his open doorway.
“Once was enough. I can’t keep up.”
“Ha. Yes. The film community does seem to have a rare talent for alcohol consumption.”
He didn’t say anything else, tapping his room key idly on the door frame. In Jane’s desperation to fill silences, she said the first thing that came into her head.
“I’m sorry, you know. About the way things were- going on, last season. The way they’re making us- look. Together.” She could feel herself turning red. Elijah had gone very still, all expression fading from his face. “The way they’re editing things, and- look, I went on-line, there’s groups of people making videos and writing stories and- not that I read them, or anything, I just couldn’t believe that people would get so invested in-”
“In what?” Elijah said quickly.
“In us. In us being- romantically- you really haven’t noticed anything?”
“I leave the marketing side of things to Madeline. I don’t read much of the press about the show but- are there really stories?”
“Yes, loads of them, it was mortifying.”
“What are they even about? You and I-”
“Yes, in various- capacities. I can’t believe you didn’t- I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Elijah gasped a weak laugh, rubbing his hand across his face. “Leave it to Madeline. She told me ratings were up, but I thought it might be just because of y-” He cut himself off, looking rather alarmed. He cleared his throat. “You.”
Jane felt that one word like a star inside her throat, her stomach. For a moment, she was incandescent.
For a moment.
“I just hope it’s not too hard on Madeline.” Jane forced the words out like teeth. “All this- gossip. I would never want to hurt her.”
“Madeline loves a bit of gossip. And honestly- this sort of thing-” He sighed, and Jane was struck by how tired he sounded in that one exhalation, a bone-deep sort of weariness. “Honestly, Mad and I are only married on paper at this point. We’re friends, business partners, but not- I don’t really know if we ever were more than that.”
“I’m sorry,” Jane said, because that’s what good people were supposed to say, people who would never wanted to tear the clothes off of married men.
“Don’t be- marriages end, life goes on. Things feel different now, though. Ratings are up and Madeline’s happy and- anyway, sorry for telling you all this. If you want me to talk to Mad about the editing I will.”
“It’s okay. It’s fine.”
“Okay.”
Jane realized that both of them were still standing in the doorways of their rooms, only the width of a hallway between them. It was strange, and yet it felt oddly appropriate to have this conversation here. Because there was barely any space separating them, and it was still a distance that Jane could not cross.
“I loved your books,” Jane said.
Elijah seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh? Thanks. You didn’t have to read them, you won’t be tested or anything.”
“I honestly couldn’t put them down. No wonder Madeline wanted to make a show about them. You’re- the writing is really-” She bit down on her tongue to stop from speaking. Try to sound professional and end up drooling over his books like a crazed fan, what was she even doing?
Elijah laughed though, shaking his head. “Madeline hasn’t read them. She saw my picture on the sleeve and called me about a series. That’s how we met, actually. I had just published the second one, and was beyond shocked when this lady from L.A. called me up, flew me down to meet with her. It didn’t seem real. It still kind of doesn’t.”
Elijah smiled, a sad smile that Jane wanted to touch with the tips of her fingers. She wondered what his lips would feel like. She imagined they’d be rough, chapped from the wind. She could almost feel them against her throat, behind her ear, the nape of her neck-
“Do you like it?” she asked, anything to stop that train of thought. “The show, I mean. Being on television.”
“It- pays the bills. Do you like it?”
Twenty-four episodes in and Jane still wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever done.”
“I guess not.”
“Do you really- can you really see them? Like you say in your book?” Jesus, one glass of wine in her room and she had no filter. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“It’s okay.” Elijah shrugged, ducked his head. “Yeah, actually. Yeah, I can. It sounds weird I know, and I’m the first to admit there’s a lot of fakes out there, but-” He shrugged again. “What about you, Jane Green. Are you a believer yet?”
“In what- ghosts?”
Elijah shrugged, eyes sparkling. “Ghosts, spirits, whatever you like.”
“No. Not yet, anyway. But- but I believe in you.”
To this day, Jane didn’t know where that sentence came from. But she said it, and she couldn’t take it back. And maybe there was some pride to be drawn from telling the truth, just a little, just once.
“I should go to bed,” Jane added quickly,
ignoring Elijah’s strange and open look. He was across the hall, and yet he could have been across the country. “Early flight and- sorry to keep you up-”
“Jane-”
“Goodnight. Goodnight.” She had to say it twice to convince herself. Give it time, give it time, she thought. Time will fix this.
She did not look at him that night, closing the door behind her, and she did not see him again until four months later, at the start of the third season. As it happened, time had not changed anything. Time had made it all much worse.
****
The door slammed shut between them, and Jane’s heart briefly stopped and restarted.
“This fucking place,” Scott shouted through the door.
It was faulty architecture not vengeful ghosts, but it was difficult to remember that. She watched the handle twist, but the door did not open. The handle jerked again, and the door stayed closed.
“It’s stuck,” Scott said, voice muffled by the inches of metal between them.
Jane’s heart started beating out a three-worded rhythm: no it’s not, no it’s not, not it’s not-
“It must lock from your side.”
Jane twisted the knob in her hand, but it wouldn’t turn fully. She tugged at the doorknob until her palm was slick with sweat. Sweat. Not blood.
“What the fuck?” Scott growled from the other side. “Okay, back up. I’m going to kick it.”
“We can’t break the building, it’s a heritage site.” Jane backed away from the door regardless.
“It’s already falling apart, this fucking dump.” There were several loud thumps from Scott’s side of the door, followed by a stream of profanity, and a few more thumps. “Fuck’s sake, this is such complete bullshit, Jesus Christ-”
I do not panic, Jane told herself, no matter what Madeline says. I am hard as brick, cold as beach glass, and I only believe in Elijah Leer.
Bloody Sexy Anthology Page 4
