A Ghost of Fire

by Sam Whittaker

  Chapter Twenty Five

  It was eleven p.m. when we arrived at the hospital. We sat in the dark of the car and said nothing at first, not sure how to proceed. Trent was in the back seat and Katie had the shotgun seat. It was Trent who eventually broke the silence. “Do we have a plan for how to get in? These aren’t exactly visiting hours.” He had a point but I had no plan. I had rushed out the door with my two friends in tow without thinking about that part. The spirit of the little girl had said it was important to come to the hospital quick so that’s what I was committed to do.

  “Well…that’s a really good point and I hadn’t thought about that,” I confessed. “Anyone else got any ideas?” I asked hopefully.

  When neither Trent nor me said anything Katie said, “Let’s just walk in there. We’ll figure it out as we go.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Trent said looking up at the hospital through the windshield. “Security at a place like this doesn’t kid around with uninvited visitors. If we try that we’re likely to be tossed out in short order. That could make it harder to get in during regular visiting hours.”

  “Do you have any better ideas?” Katie asked.

  “Well, no not really,” Trent said.

  Katie opened her door, stepped out and leaned back down to speak to us. “Then unless you want to break your leg or fake an illness it looks like we’re left with my way.” Trent looked at me and all I could do was shrug. I opened my door and exited the vehicle. Trent did likewise and we all started walking to the main entrance.

  Once we were inside we headed to the reception desk which was empty. We stopped there and waited for someone to come.

  Trent asked, “Do you know where we’re headed?”

  “Yes,” I responded. I turned to Katie and said, “It’s the same floor you were on when you were here.”

  “Great,” she said, “I was hoping for a stroll down memory lane.”

  “So where’s the person who’s supposed to man this battle station?” I asked. We looked around and there was no one in the foyer. When no one came after a few minutes Katie stepped behind the desk and started toying with the computer.

  “Whoa, what are you doing?” asked Trent.

  “It looks like we have to let ourselves in. I’m just moving things along. We don’t have all night,” Katie replied. After a few minutes she said, “There, that ought to do it. Let’s go.” She started walking and we followed.

  “What did you just do?” I asked.

  “I unlocked the door to the patient areas. We have about ten seconds before it relocks itself from this side. Let’s move it.” We pushed through the door and made for the elevator. When we got there I hit the button on the wall and we waited for the doors to open. My anxiety rose slightly when we stepped inside the box and the doors closed.

  “Are you okay? You’re breathing kind of fast,” Katie said.

  “I’ll be okay,” I reassured her. “I just haven’t had the greatest luck with elevators in recent memory.” The doors slid open on our destination and it was eerily silent. We stepped cautiously into the hall seeing what there was to see. There wasn’t much. The place was deserted.

  “Hey, take a look at the nurse’s station,” I said. It too was empty.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Trent said. “Let’s go find this room of yours so we can do whatever it is we need to do and get out of here.” He looked around nervously. He had handled James Price easily enough in the bookstore but this was a completely different ball game for him. I couldn’t blame him for being nervous; it was a different game for all of us. But I was drawn to the nurse’s station. I couldn’t go forward without checking it out first.

  “Hold on a second, I need to see something,” I said then I began to slowly walk toward the empty station. When I reached it I stopped and looked around to be sure I wasn’t being watched. It felt like I was but there was no one in sight. I started to make my way to the other side and froze in my tracks when I was most of the way around. There was a nurse lying face up on the floor, her eyes open and glazed and unmoving. A small pool of blood had formed under her head: Dead. She reminded me of the woman I had seen lying dead on the ground floor of the orphanage in one of my earlier dreams.

  I looked up to Trent and Katie and they must have seen the alarm on my face because they came running. Trent cursed and Katie covered her mouth with both hands when they saw the dead nurse. I ran past them in the direction of the room I was meant to enter and they soon followed. When we turned the corner James Price was standing in the hallway in front of the door, staring angrily into the room. He had a kitchen knife clutched in his hand and there was a syringe protruding from his shoulder.

  He tensed his body and it looked like he was about lunge into the room so I yelled, “Hey!”

  In retrospect I don’t know if it was the best idea in the world but it is what I was left with in the moment. Price’s head whipped around in our direction and I heard Katie groan behind me. His eyes glowed orange, his skin was bright red as if he’d been badly sunburned and I could smell smoke. At first he just stared at us. He raised the knife and slowly, fluidly slashed through the air in front of him. Finally he opened his mouth and issued a primal scream. Then he ran the other direction.

  We ran to the door and looked into the room. There was a doctor standing protectively over the room’s patient. He held a metal I.V. stand as a defensive weapon. There was a slash mark on the left arm of his lab coat. The cut was rimmed in crimson. When he saw us he continued to hold up the long metal stand.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded.

  “We’re friends,” I said as calmly as I could.

  “Oh yeah? But whose friends are you? Mine or that other guy’s?”

  “Yours,” I reassured him, “definitely not his. We came here to meet the person who resides in this room.”

  “How do you know Susan,” the doctor asked a little less suspicious. He seemed to be buying our innocence. He lowered the I.V. stand and let the end rest on the ground which was a good sign. And now we knew the patient was a ‘her.’ We still wouldn’t have been able to tell because he continued to stand in front of her.

  “We don’t exactly know her. We just know we’re supposed to find her and meet her.” The doctor looked confused.

  “Meet her? How are you supposed to meet her? She’s been in a coma for a very long time. I don’t think she’s waking up any time soon.” He stepped aside to reveal the form of an old woman. When I say old, I don’t mean she looked like she was in her late sixties or early seventies. The frail and withered thing in the bed was at least past her mid-eighties if not older. But her advanced age was actually the second thing I noticed about her. The first thing I noticed was her face. More specifically, I noticed what was wrong with her face. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “My God, it’s her,” I heard myself say.

  “It’s who?” asked Trent. “Do you know who this woman is?”

  “I do, but not like this,” I said trying to sort through the confusion and facts before me. On one side of the woman’s face was a burn scar I had seen on several occasions. The only problem was that when I saw the scar before it was on a much younger face. “Come and see. Come,” I quoted.

  “What did you say?” asked Trent, thoroughly confused.

  “That’s what she said. She wanted me to come and see her, not someone else. This is the little girl who’s been haunting me. She’s alive.”

  “What are you people talking about?” the doctor almost yelled.

  “Just wait,” Katie said to him. “I think something big is about to happen.”

  Just then I felt warmth begin to grow in my right pocket. I had almost forgotten that I had brought it with me. I reached into the pocket and pulled out the key I had found in the box at Spectra. It glowed in my hand the closer it got to the woman…the closer it got to Susan. The officer at my old apartment had instructed me to get the key to Susan.

&
nbsp; Her eyes fluttered open and she began to search the room. Soon she found me and the key I held in my hand. She smiled very weakly. I could see it was her more clearly now that she was awake. The life in her eyes was not that of an old, dying woman but that of a curious child. She looked back at me in complete recognition.

  “Susan, can you hear me? It’s Steve,” I said. She just smiled back.

  “She won’t be able to talk,” the doc interjected. “She’s about ninety-five years old and ninety of that has been spent in a coma give or take. Her vocal chords have been unused for that long and will be no good. Quite frankly there’s no way she should even be alive. It’s a medical miracle she’s lasted this long. We’ve just been feeding her intravenously and having someone from physical therapy come down and exercise some of her muscles for her. Other than that she’s just been laying here in the hospital sleeping the decades away.”

  “Steve,” called the little girl’s voice, “Steve help us.”

  I stared at her in shock and then looked at everyone else. “Did you guys just hear her talk?” Everyone looked at me with questions in their eyes. “I guess not.” I wondered briefly if I had imagined it.

  “Steve, they can’t hear me.” This time I was looking right at her. Her lips didn’t move but the words were definitely there.

  “How are you doing this?” I asked her.

  “What is he doing?” the doctor asked.

  “They’re talking, be quiet,” Katie answered.

  “I’m not doing it, Steve. We both are. We’re talking inside our heads. No one else can hear what I’m saying. They only hear what you say.” The childlike voice moved through my mind though it sounded as if it were spoken aloud to the room. I thought the rate at which my view of the world changed at such a rapid pace I was going to have to stop keeping track of it at some point and just learn to go with it.

  “Okay, I get that. What do you want?” The others watched me and concentrated on what I said. I imagine it was like listening to only half a phone conversation. You wouldn’t get everything but you could at least get the general feel for what the conversation was about.

  “I want to stop him. But I can’t stop him. I’ve only held him back all these years. But when you came along the power in you gave him strength and he got loose.” She looked sad. She knew telling me this would be a difficult thing for me.

  “Are you saying it’s my fault he’s doing this?” Everyone looked surprised at this but Katie especially was alarmed. But she wasn’t as alarmed as I was. Among many things one of the implications of this was that the harm which had come to her was somehow directly related to me. That didn’t sit comfortably with me at all.

  “Yes and no. Yes, he has been set loose because of the thing inside you. Without it he would still be trapped. No, he’s doing what he has always done. You have nothing to do with that. And no, my time is closing and he would be free once that happened anyway.” One thing I already noticed about our conversation was that it was changing. When we started she spoke in very childlike ways. As the talk progressed her words and thoughts became more grown up, though the sound of her voice in my head remained that of a child. I knew then that I didn’t have much time. She was growing up slipping away all at the same time. I knew it would be best to cut to the chase.

  “Alright Susan, I know there’s little time. What about this?” I held up the key for her to see.

  “Please give it to me, Steve.” She stretched out an ancient, spindly arm and the palm of her hand was upturned.

  “Why?” I had to know.

  “Because if you don’t you can’t stop him either. You need me to fix the key so you can get in.”

  “Get in where,” I asked.

  “You already know where. Give it to me.” I didn’t think I knew what she was talking about but I thought I might be able to tease it out if I gave it enough time. She continued to hold out her hand. I relented and placed the key in her palm. She wrapped her fingers around it and closed her eyes.

  “What’s she doing,” Trent asked in a whisper.

  “I really don’t know,” I said.

  Susan said, “I’m endowing the key with myself, the ability of my mind. When I’m finished with this I will be finished.”

  “What do you mean, ‘finished’?” But she gave no reply. Instead the room grew somewhat dark and I felt a sorrow swell up in my heart. From everyone else’s faces I saw they felt the same thing. Suddenly the room snapped back to its normal hospital bright.

  Susan exhaled a fast breath and her arm dropped to the bed. Her hand unfolded, releasing the key from her grip. It dropped to the floor, clattered briefly and then lay silent. Susan too lay silent on her hospital bed.

  “Susan,” I said her name and concern laced the word. “Susan, can you hear me?” The machine monitoring her emitted a loud steady noise. We all stood in shock at what had just happened, none of us possessing the proper categories to process such an event. The machines continued their noise until the doctor reached over and shut them off. He looked at me and I knew he would do nothing to revive her. He knew it would be a pointless effort. I also read from his face he believed she had gone on quite long enough and I would not argue with the man.

  I stooped down to pick up the key. When I straightened I held the little thing between my thumb and index finger. It wasn’t just any key, it was a psychic key. This will get you through the door, I thought. But that thought almost had a young, feminine quality of voice to it. I still did not know which door it was supposed to open although I had a feeling that answer would come very soon.

  “What do we do now?” asked Trent.

  I replied, “That’s a really great question. I have no idea.” I looked to Katie but she only shrugged her shoulders. The doctor just looked away. He wanted nothing to do with whatever crazy thing was going on in his hospital. I looked at him and said, “Hey, we need to get out of here and you are going to need to call the police. The crazy guy who was here killed at least one person, a nurse. He may have gotten others before he came after you and Susan. I need you to do something for me: destroy the security tapes and blame it on the crazy guy. We were never here. You chased the crazy guy off by yourself. Got it?”

  He hemmed and hawed at first but I got him to reluctantly agree. He got to work right away. He dialed the security desk and there was no answer. It turned out the guards were beaten unconscious and left for dead. The doc had them taken to the E.R. While that was all being taken care of he found where the security footage was recorded and erased it. We had waited in the reception area until we heard from him. When he gave us the all clear we left.

  As we walked back to the car a flash of inspiration came to me. I stopped and pulled the key out to examine it. Sure enough my suspicion was confirmed. I issued a short victory laugh.

  “What is it now?” Katie asked.

  “I know where the door is,” I said. “How could I have missed it?”

  “Where is it?” Trent inquired.

  I said, “It all comes full circle, doesn’t it? It’s on city lots 36-49. It’s at Spectra where this whole thing started. On my first day of work when I got into the elevator I saw there was an extra basement level listed. Next to the button for that level was a hole for some kind of key. I thought that was a little weird at the time but…” I trailed off in thought.

  Trent took up the line and said, “Spectra knows about this don’t they? I mean, why else would they have their elevator set up like that.” I guessed it was possible. The officer who chased Price with me seemed to know about the key and about Susan. Why not others?

  “This web just keeps getting more tangled the more you learn,” said Katie. I looked over at her and thought about how she kept showing herself more and more resolute and capable. Then I looked over to Trent and was glad for the rational cool he lent to our little group. It felt like destiny.

  “You’re telling me,” I said.

  “So what do we do next,” asked Trent. He opened the right rear
passenger door but waited to get in until he heard what I had to say.

  “We prepare for battle,” I said.

  “How do we prepare for something like this?” he asked.

  I replied, “I wish to God I knew.”