Bunny Call

by Scott Cawthon

  Nurse Colton and Nurse Ackerman had both been masked, gowned, and gloved when they’d cleaned up the detonated pillow. They’d also put camphor on their upper lips to dampen the smells. However, they’d both gagged repeatedly for the hour it took to clean the room … and Nurse Thomas.

  What was the shadow?

  That was the discussion the three women had at Nurse Thomas’s house the previous evening. They’d decided it was an extension of the thing in the bed … or what was inside the thing in the bed.

  This was why Nurse Colton thought she knew what to do about it. She had some experience with this sort of thing, and she felt pretty good about her plan.

  Whereas Nurse Ackerman was cut off from her emotions and Nurse Thomas was too enslaved to hers, Nurse Colton thought she was the perfect balance of heart and brain. She felt and felt deeply, yes, but she also had a depth of reason that the other two women lacked. She had to have this balance. Nurse Colton had been on her own since she was sixteen.

  When her parents died, Nurse Colton had decided to forego foster care. She’d instead run away, found a woman who made fake IDs, and gotten a job on a cruise ship, a job that came with free room and board. Over time, she’d saved up enough money to pay for nursing school. Now she was here because people like her lost people like her parents. It was only right to use what she knew about it to help others.

  On her way down the hall to room 1280, Nurse Colton saw the little boy run into the storage room. She still had no idea whether he was real or supernatural. She suspected the latter, but if he was some kind of ghost, she didn’t know what to make of him, and she didn’t know how to make him go away. So she figured she’d deal with one mystery at a time.

  At the door of room 1280, Nurse Colton stopped and set down the tote bag she carried. Looking back down the hall, she pulled out eucalyptus oil combined with a carrier oil. She put a dab of the oil mixture above her upper lip. The strong aroma, she hoped, would block out the contemptible stink in the room.

  After one more look down the hall, Nurse Colton pulled a plain white pillar candle out of her tote. She stepped into room 1280, and she set down the candle. Then she pulled out another candle, and set it a couple feet from the first one. One after the other, she placed candles around the perimeter of the space. Once she had the candles in place, Nurse Colton pulled a lighter from her tote bag, and she methodically lit every candle.

  After the candles were lit, Nurse Colton closed her eyes and imagined expanding the candles’ light until it filled the entire room. Then she turned and looked at the man in the bed, and she said, “This room is filled with the light of good. No shadow can enter or do mischief here.”

  She stood very still to be sure her intention was strong enough. Yes, it felt right.

  Nurse Colton believed in the power of intention and human will. Both had helped her survive the loss of her parents and build a life on her own terms. Both would serve her now, she was sure of it.

  Good. It was time.

  Nurse Colton set down her tote bag and looked at the man in the bed. Unlike Nurse Thomas, Nurse Colton preferred to face the ugliness of life head-on. Yes, the man’s fire-blighted bones and nearly calcified insides filled her with revulsion, but she could handle it.

  Now she was going to rid the world of it.

  Nurse Colton pulled out a syringe. It held no drug. It was a syringe of air. She figured if the thing in the bed could breathe, it could die of an air embolism.

  Leaning forward, Nurse Colton began injecting the air into the IV port in the thing’s forearm. She had no doubt she’d succeed because she knew she was standing in a protective circle. This circle was so strong that even if the shadow—whatever it was—was inside the circle when she cast it, the circle would stop the shadow from doing what it wanted to do.

  As she began to depress the plunger on the syringe … her protection circle failed.

  Lacerating the air in front of Nurse Colton, a shadow swept across the syringe. The syringe leaped from her hand, spinning just once before shooting like an arrow toward Nurse Colton’s throat. Stabbing deep into her skin just above the collarbone, it vibrated, sending jitters through her neck.

  Nurse Colton knew if she didn’t grab the syringe immediately, the air in that syringe was going to kill her. So she reacted instantly, jerking the syringe from her neck only to have it snatched from her again. This time, she held up her hands in surrender.

  The syringe fell to the floor and snapped in half. Then a hot, musty blast of air rushed through the room and extinguished every candle flame. The candles flew back and smacked the walls.

  Nurse Colton had never had her intention so violently defied, and she was rattled. But she wasn’t going to show it.

  She looked at the vile mass on the bed. “We’ll find a way,” she said.

  A giggle came from outside the hallway.

  Nurse Colton rushed to the door and she ran right into Nurse Fremont, who stood like a statue, staring down the hall.

  “He went that way,” Mia told Nurse Colton.

  “Who?” she asked, looking stunned.

  “The little boy.”

  “I’m beginning to think it’s not a little boy,” Nurse Colton admitted.

  Mia nodded. “Me too.”

  The nurses stood in silence, looking down the hall. Then Mia asked, “What just happened?”

  “You saw?”

  Mia nodded. She wasn’t afraid.

  Nurse Colton cocked her head and studied Mia for several moments. “You’re curious,” she concluded correctly.

  Mia nodded again.

  “Okay. Come in.” Nurse Colton went back into room 1280.

  Mia tried to follow, but she had to stop in the doorway and cover her nose.

  Mia liked to keep lists. She kept lists of the best things in life—best experiences, best sights, best tastes, best smells, best sounds, etc. And she kept lists of the worst things in life. Three of the smells on her worst smells list were rotten eggs, dead bodies (she’d unfortunately once been the one to discover the body of an elderly woman in an adjacent apartment without family to check on her … it was the smell that had led to the discovery), and a skunk’s spray.

  The smell in this room was worse than Mia’s three worst smells combined.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Try this.” Nurse Colton handed Mia a small container of essential oil. Mia sniffed it and then rubbed some of it above her upper lip.

  It was better but not great. Still, Mia stepped into the room.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected to see but it wasn’t this. What was this?

  “The poor, poor man,” she whispered.

  Nurse Colton looked at the bed and sighed. Then she said, “Yes. But the man isn’t the problem.”

  Mia glanced at Nurse Colton and then returned her gaze to what lay in the bed.

  Mia had never been squeamish. In fact, she kind of enjoyed the gory stuff. She’d looked at the elderly cadaver she’d discovered, stared right at the mass of maggots and thought, Cool. It was nature at work.

  But this?

  This wasn’t nature.

  This was the exact opposite of nature. It was a violation of the very idea of nature.

  Neither a skeleton nor a man, this brittle bone container of decaying organs and tissue still somehow managed to sustain enough life to result in the brain activity Mia could see on one of the monitors. That was just wrong, fundamentally wrong.

  “It’s what’s inside that’s the problem,” Mia said.

  “Yes,” Nurse Colton said.

  Mia thought about the conversations she’d heard. The conversations about evil and extermination. Now they had context.

  Turning, Mia met Nurse Colton’s direct gaze and nodded. “I think I understand.”

  Mia was a genius.

  Arthur had felt like a spoiled child, following the administration staff around, asking over and over for permission to take the man in room 1280 to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution C
enter. He couldn’t, however, argue with the results.

  In spite of the vociferous and numerous objections voiced by the nurses on the hospice wing and even from others in the hospital (when they signed a petition), Arthur received a call late the evening before telling him he could take the man in room 1280 to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center if he came in and signed a multitude of papers absolving the hospital from any responsibility for whatever might result from the trip.

  So, once again, Arthur pedaled toward Heracles Hospital. Today, he was wearing full rain gear because there was no arguing with the colossal churning storm clouds that dominated the sky. Not a single ray of the sun’s light was finding its way through the black and gray cloud stacks that made it seem more like twilight than 10:10 in the morning.

  Rain began falling as the hospital came into view. Arthur kept his head down, navigating by the markings for the bicycle lane at the right edge of the driveway. Every car that sped past sprayed Arthur with water and buffeted Ruby so her tires wobbled a little on the pavement. Arthur was relieved when he glanced up and saw he was almost to the portico.

  But then his feet fumbled with Ruby’s pedals. Had he just seen what he thought he’d seen?

  Glancing up at the portico, taking in the majesty of the building’s vine-covered facade and its intricate statuary, he was sure he’d just seen a child’s head peek out from behind the stone Cerberus.

  Arthur braked, wiped his eyes, and stared through the gauzy rain curtains separating him from the hospital. He squinted, focusing as intensely as he could on Cerberus and the top of the columns flanking the portico. No. Nothing was there.

  He must have imagined what he’d seen. All that talk about the little boy; it had put the idea in his mind.

  But … he didn’t think he’d imagined it.

  Arthur tried to take a last look, but the rain curtains turned into solid walls of water pounding the earth as if Mother Nature was trying to obliterate an enemy. Now Arthur could see nothing but rain, so he stood on Ruby’s pedals and got both himself and his poor drowned bicycle under cover.

  Ten minutes later, still dripping water wherever he went because he carried his wet rain gear with him, Arthur sat in front of a very different desk from all the desks he’d sat in front of during his campaign for the trip to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. This wasn’t the desk of some low-level paper-pusher. This was the desk of someone with power—in this case, legal power. Arthur sat in front of the desk of Carolyn Benning Graves, Heracles Hospital’s head attorney.

  Ms. Graves had much nicer chairs than Pete and all the others in the administration office. Arthur was quite comfortable in a burgundy leather wingback chair.

  “You understand, Father Blythe, that any damages resulting from this patient transport, be they property or personal, shall be wholly and completely your responsibility?”

  Arthur nodded. “I understand.” His stomach did a somersault. What if something went wrong?

  Arthur adjusted his attitude. Where was his faith? He and the man in room 1280 would be watched over.

  The attorney pushed a stack of papers across the clean polished surface of her mahogany desk. “Please read through these agreements, sign where indicated, and initial where specified.”

  Arthur started to lean forward.

  “Not here, Father Blythe,” Ms. Graves said. She made a motion, and a thin, well-dressed young woman appeared and picked up the papers. “Please go with Ms. Weber here. She’ll take you to a place where you can read and sign. I’m afraid I have another appointment.”

  Arthur dutifully vacated the wingback chair, feeling victorious.

  Mia hovered in the hallway outside the hospital’s legal offices. She’d been told Father Blythe was still signing papers giving him the authority to take the man in room 1280 to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. In spite of those papers, she hoped she’d be able to talk him into giving up the idea.

  Leaning against the wall, Mia nodded and smiled at everyone who went by, but she didn’t really see anyone. Her mind wasn’t in this hallway with her. It was reviewing what had led her to this place and this time and this mission.

  Mia hadn’t really understood why the only job she could find was on the hospice wing at Heracles Hospital. She was highly qualified and had excellent references. She should have been able to get a better position. In fact, she’d been feeling pretty resentful that she was stuck with what she’d gotten.

  If it wasn’t for her boyfriend continually reminding her that the job was a stepping stone, she’d have been pretty miserable. But between his encouragement, his wonderful sandwiches, and her own naturally optimistic nature, she’d been reasonably content here … except for being creeped out by her fellow nurses on the hospice wing and their disturbing hushed conversations.

  But now she understood them. Oh boy, did she ever!

  Mia also understood why she had gotten this job. She was needed here.

  “Why hello, Mia.”

  Mia focused and realized Father Blythe was standing in front of her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Mia smiled as she watched Father Blythe juggle a stack of papers, orange rain gear, and his bright red bicycle helmet. The rain gear dripped on Father Blythe’s black leather shoes. For some reason, he always smelled like coconuts.

  “Actually, I’m here to talk to you, Father,” Mia said. She glanced around the busy hallway, then she looked down the hall to a small waiting area. “Could you come with me a second?”

  Father Blythe glanced at his watch. “Peggy’s going to be meeting me out front with the church van. It’s wheelchair accessible. I’m going to trade her Ruby for the van.” Then he looked into Mia’s eyes. “But okay.”

  Mia took Father Blythe’s arm and led him down the hall. She smiled at everyone as they went, noticing that several nurses gave Father Blythe disapproving frowns.

  In the waiting area, Mia sat in one of the tan plush chairs and motioned to the one next to it. Father Blythe sat beside her.

  “What is it, Mia? You seem troubled.”

  “I am.”

  She looked at Father Blythe’s warm brown eyes. He had such a kind face, such an open face. She could see that he’d known suffering, but she could also tell that he was resolute in his intention to see the good in everything. He had one of those mouths that curved upward, even when his face was expressionless. He was designed for seeing light in darkness.

  Realizing that he was waiting for her to speak, Mia looked around to be sure they were alone. She leaned as close to Father Blythe as she could without being weird, inhaled, and then said in a rush, “Father, I know I gave you that advice about how to get permission to take the man in room 1280 out of the hospital. But you can’t take him. You just can’t. The man in room 1280 … he can’t leave this place. I can’t explain why I know this, but I know it. He can’t go where he wants to go. You can’t take him. The other nurses are right. I thought they were lunatics. I admit it. I did. But now I understand. They’re right. There’s something in that poor man. There’s something in there, and you can’t take it where it wants to go. You can’t. It will be devastating, even catastrophic, if you do. I don’t know how or why but I do know it. You have to believe me. I—” Mia stopped. She realized that she could gush forth another thousand or even million words and Father Blythe wasn’t going to change his mind. It was right there on his face.

  Lips pressed into compassionate regret, thick gray brows drawn together, crinkles drawn in at the corner of his wide-set eyes, slightly weak chin tucked—these were all telegraphing what was going to come out of Father Blythe’s mouth.

  “Mia,” he said when she’d finished her case, “I’m so sorry. But I have to take this man where he wants to go. It’s his last request.”

  “Just because it’s his last request doesn’t make it a good one,” Mia attempted futilely.

  “Why is this so important to you?” Father Blythe asked.

  Mia
had no logical answer. She wasn’t about to explain what she’d seen in his hospital room; she knew how crazy it sounded, and she couldn’t lose this job. But beyond what she’d seen, all she had was a feeling, an intuition. Maybe it was a premonition. “It just is,” she said finally.

  Father Blythe set down his rain gear and bicycle helmet. He tucked the papers under his arm, and he took Mia’s hand.

  “Mia, I’ve lived long enough to see the kind of evil that exists in our world. I haven’t seen it all, by any means, but I’ve seen more than enough to understand that my glass-is-always-full attitude has no basis in earthly reality. I should be jaded by now, I suppose. I should be pessimistic, ready to see the worst. But I’m not. I’m not because I choose not to let the past color the way I see the present. I choose to expect, in every moment, to find what’s good.”

  “But what if you don’t?”

  “Then there’s always the next moment.”

  “And what if there isn’t?” Mia could hear the fear in her voice. She brushed away the tears that threatened to spill.

  Father Blythe breathed in and out slowly. “Then I’ll move on to whatever my journey holds next for me, I suppose. That’s all we can do. That’s all I’m trying to do for the man in room 1280.”

  Mia swallowed and nodded. “You won’t change your mind.”

  “I’m sorry, but no.”

  Mia stood, and Father Blythe gathered his things.

  “May I hug you, Father?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  They hugged, and she tried to pour into Father Blythe the inexplicably huge amount of warmth she felt for him. Or was it worry?

  They separated, and he said, “Bye, Mia. I’ll see you again soon.”

  “Bye, Father,” she said as he gave her a little wave and headed down the hall.