Possession (25 page)

Wendy started to fold the paper. “Maybe she wigged
out when they grabbed her. Dr. Barton doesn’t like it when patients go crazy on
him. He tends to keep them in lockdown forever.”

“Is that why you were in solitary?” I asked.

“I had a bit of a breakdown.” She looked away.

Wendy had spent months in a padded room without
anyone to talk to. Without any outside stimulation. How did she not go crazy? I
only hoped that, when we finally got to Mildred, she hadn’t lost what little
was left of her mind. She had told me she’d been in solitary once before, and
it had driven her mad.

There was a loud
bang
. I looked up and watched as a tree branch swung against the
window. The wind had picked up outside. I could hear it roaring louder and
louder, and then the sound of raindrops hitting glass echoed across the room.

“A storm’s brewing outside,” I said.

“Looks like a bad one.” Luke walked over to the
window.

It was too bad we weren’t making our escape tonight.
The storm might have worked in our favor. We could’ve made a run for it and
used the rain as cover. It would have made it harder for anyone to see us
crossing the yard.

A bright flash lit up the room, followed by a loud
crash of thunder. Lightning. I was glad we weren’t out there. Climbing an
electric fence was the last thing I wanted to be doing when lightning was
striking.

Luke started folding up the map.

The crystal in Wendy’s hand moved. It jerked, then
swung and slowly lifted up in the air until it hung at a right angle.

“What the heck?” Wendy held onto the chain as it
swayed and pulled in the air. It stretched, strained, and then turned and
pointed down to a part of the paper that was still open. The chain snapped, and
the crystal came down with a clatter onto the map.

I read the words under it. “Infirmary. Why did it
do that?”

Wendy shook her head. Her eyes were wide.

“I think we’re
here
,”
she said, pointing to a place not far from the infirmary. “We might as well
check it out while we’re close. It might be one of your ghosts trying to show
us something.”

We made our way down the hall. According to
Wendy’s paper, the infirmary was just around the corner.

The place was empty and dark. The glow from the flashlights
swung back and forth across the floor as we walked. Without warning, I felt a
chill run down my back. Goose bumps rose on my arms.
Something’s not right.

“You feel that?” I asked Luke.

He nodded his head.

Wendy suddenly cocked her head to the side. “Do
you hear it?”

I listened, but I could only hear the storm raging
outside. “What?” I whispered.

Wendy didn’t answer. She just looked off into the
distance.

We took a few steps forward. Luke’s flashlight
started to flicker. And then so did Wendy’s.

He hit his flashlight. “Batteries must be getting
low.”

Another chill lifted goose bumps along my skin,
and I knew there was something else going on besides the batteries. We made it
to the door of the infirmary. All three of us stood in front of the two large
metal doors. The air around us suddenly felt heavy and ominous.

I looked over at Luke. He was frowning. Wendy had
a spaced-out expression on her face.

I reached to push my way into the room.

Wendy put her hand on mine. “Wait—you don’t
want to do that.”

“Why not?” I whispered.

She didn’t say anything. She just shook her head
back and forth.

I looked back at Luke.

He had a grim expression on his face. He moved up
next to me. “Open it.”

I forced my hand out and took a step inside.

I’d seen this room before. It looked exactly like
it had in my vision. Red symbols decorated the walls and the floor. There was a
pentagram in the middle of the floor and black candles surrounded it, their
flames flickering in a breeze that whistled through a crack in one of the
windows. I could hear the rain pounding against the panes of glass. I could
hear the roar of the wind, so loud now it sounded like a freight train. My eyes
swung to the middle of the pentagram.

There was something there, laying on the floor at
its center.
What is that
?

I took a step forward, but Luke’s hand came up and
grabbed my shoulder. He shoved me back behind him.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Larry,” Luke said.

“Larry? We just left him in the closet.” I didn’t
understand.

Luke headed forward and stopped just outside the
pentagram. He leaned forward a bit, but made a point of keeping his body from
crossing over the pentagram’s threshold. “It’s Larry. He’s…dead.”

I found myself moving forward until I stood next
to Luke. I looked down into the circle.
Oh,
Goddess.
Larry’s body lie there, his legs twisted at an unnatural angle and
his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were closed—he looked like he
might be sleeping, except that there was a wicked gash across his neck, a deep
cut where someone had slit his throat. I could see a trail of red blood that ran
from the pool by his throat to the wall. Someone killed him. Someone killed him
and then used his blood to paint the symbols on the wall. We were standing in
the room I’d seen in my visions, the one the killer had been in.

The killer had stood in this very circle.

A soft noise filled the room, slowly increasing in
volume. I looked behind me. Wendy stood in the doorway, her eyes rolled back in
her head. A gurgling noise was coming out of her mouth. She began to sway back
and forth, and as she did, the noise got louder. She started to keen, singing,
crying out.

Luke grabbed my hand. “We need to get out of
here.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a
flash of lightning hit, followed a few seconds later by a loud crash of
thunder. As the thunder echoed in the room, Luke’s flashlight went out. And
then so did Wendy’s. The only light came from the candles.

I heard a sort of swooshing
sound and watched in horror as the flames flickered wildly, and then went out.

We stood in the dark. Wendy had stopped wailing. The room
was totally silent.

“Colina.” Luke’s hand reached out and grabbed mine.

“Right here,” I answered.

“Stay close. We don’t know if this lunatic is
still around.”

But then a horrible thought entered my mind:
What if the lunatic is standing right next
to me, holding my hand
? Luke would never do such a thing, but what if
Weatherton’s
spirit could force itself to the surface anytime
it wanted? What if
Weatherton
possessed him when he
had gone looking for the flashlights? Luke
had
been gone a long time.

Larry was alive when we’d left him, bound and
gagged in the closet. He’d been left as an easy target for the madman. I tried
to measure the time Luke had been gone in my head. Was he gone long enough to
go back, get Larry, carry him in here, and slit his throat? I searched my
memory. There had been nothing odd about Luke when he came back with the
flashlights. There was no blood on him that I could see, and he hadn’t acted
strangely.

Luke came back to us—I’m sure of it
.
I knew him well enough—the way
he looked at me, his body language, the way his voice sounded…
Weatherton
couldn’t fool me. But if
Weatherton
could pop up at will, then or even now…the guy standing next to me could
suddenly morph into a homicidal maniac at any moment.

I let go of Luke’s hand and shuffled backward.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I took one step away
from him and then another. I kept going backward until my body hit a wall. It
was dark in the room, pitch-black without any light.

And then lightning streaked across the windows,
and for a split-second the room lit up. Wendy was huddled against the wall on
my side of the room. Her hands were on both sides of her head. She was rocking
back and forth.

Another flash of lightning showed Luke still
across the room. He started toward me, but I turned my back. The room went
black again.

I knew Wendy was close by. I reached out my hands
and whispered, “Wendy. Where are you?”

I could hear small whimpering noises coming from
my left. Another step and my hands brushed against a body. I crouched down and
reached up until my fingers slid across her face. “Wendy, snap out of it,” I
hissed. Whatever was going on inside her head at the moment had turned her immobile.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her up until we were both standing. “We need to
get out of here.”

“Colina? Answer me!” It was Luke’s voice, and it
was getting closer.

I dragged Wendy with me as I tried to find my way
to the door. I desperately hoped I wouldn’t trip over the dead body lying somewhere
in the middle of the pentagram.
The
pentagram
. Luke was careful not to cross it. What if I do? What if I
stumble into it? I had no choice—I would keep walking until I hit another
wall.

My left hand pulled Wendy close while my right
hand waved back and forth in front of me. I would use the wall to make my way
back to the door. But how would I negotiate all the twists and turns down the
hallways to get back to the main hospital? To get back to a place that had
light?

Finally my hand flattened against the wall. I slid
my fingers against the rough surface. It wasn’t easy trying to navigate both of
us through the dark. Wendy was pretty much deadweight at this point as I pulled
her along beside me.

“Colina, where are you?” Luke’s voice sounded
panicked this time. “Why aren’t you answering me?!

My foot hit something, and I stumbled forward,
pulling Wendy with me. I lie on the ground and sucked in a breath at the pain
radiating from my knee. I had whacked it against something on my way down to
the ground. I started to push myself up when the candles sprang to life. The
room was awash in light. Inches from my face, lying on the floor, was Wendy.

Or so I thought for a brief moment.

Wendy’s hair was jet-black and her eyes were dark.
The eyes staring at me were green and vacant, the hair blond. There was no
spark of life in the woman’s eyes.
It’s Caroline.
She was lying on the floor in front of me.
Was she here the whole time? I don’t remember seeing her in here earlier. Now
she lie on the floor before me, a pool of dried blood at the base of her skull.

Wendy was sitting up, her hands around her knees.
She was still making odd noises and rocking slowly back and forth. She looked
at me, and for a moment her eyes focused. She pointed toward the girl. “He pounded
nails into her head.”

I looked closer. There were several metal objects
protruding from her skull. Bent nails stuck out at disturbing angles, and a
concave section of the skull glittered with those that had been driven all the
way in. Blood and other fluids puddled in the depression, but less than I would
have expected. The nails reached into her brain, but didn’t make a large enough
hole to bleed freely.

Wendy pointed toward the girl’s feet. “That’s the hammer
he used.”

There was a hammer covered with dried blood laying
at Caroline’s feet. I haven’t seen her all day.
When did the maniac take her and kill her?
“Who was it, Wendy? Who killed her?”

“Henry—Henry
Weatherton
,”
she said, her eyes looking off in the distance.

At his name, my heart stopped beating for a moment.
“Is he here now?” I whispered. I was looking over at Luke. He stood watching us,
but made no move to come toward us.

She shook her head slowly back and forth. “I don’t
think so.”

I forced myself to move. I got up and pulled Wendy
with me. I was careful not to touch the body. The last thing I want to do is create
a zombie.

“
What
is
going on?” Luke demanded.

“Nothing. Wendy freaked when the lights went off.”

Luke stormed over to us and reached out his hand
to take mine. I moved away.

He gave me a long stare. “Why are you afraid of
me?”

I averted my eyes. “I’m not.”

“Colina?” When I didn’t answer, he went on. “Look,
the killer was here not long ago. He’s killed two people. We need to get out of
here.”

My eyes followed the crimson trail of the nurse’s
blood as it zigged and zagged across the floor. The blood trail didn’t stop at
the floor—it ran up the wall. I looked at it in shock. There were large
red letters painted on the wall.

They spelled out my name. Colina.

Weatherton
wrote my name
on the wall…in blood.

“He’s not trying to hide that he’s killing anymore.”
Luke’s voice was low. “And he’s not killing only one a month anymore, either.
All bets are off.”

“Why paint my name?” I whispered.

Luke’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the wall. “My
guess is that this has become personal,” he said in a low voice. “You’re the
one the spirits are asking for help. The one who might be able to stop him.”

“But—I’m not,” I hissed. “I just want out of
this place.”

He took a step toward me, but seemed to catch
himself and stopped. “We need to get back.”

“We
need
to do the spell and talk to the spirits. We
need
to find out where he’s hiding.” The fear and shock were leaving, and in their place
I felt anger rise. “He’s killed two people. He scrawled
my name
on the wall in blood. I’m not waiting to see if he decides
to come after me—after us. We need to end this now.”

Luke crossed his arms in front of his chest. “If
you’re serious about going through with this, we have the board.
But
we will be doing the spell without
protection…we have no medallion.”

As the word
medallion
came out of his mouth, Wendy suddenly straightened up. All fear left her face and
her expression became slack.

“Wendy?” I said her name and reached for her.

She moved away, running across the room and out
the door.

“What’s she doing?” Luke started after her. “We
can’t let her run around by herself!
Weatherton
could
be out there!”

Luke took off after her, and I followed closely behind.
I paused for a moment and looked one last time at the bodies lying on the
floor. Two people dead. Brutally murdered.
Weatherton
has a lot to answer for when we finally find him.

I turned and ran after Luke. It was pitch-black in
the hallways. He was only a few feet ahead of me, his flashlight bouncing light
against the floor and walls. Wendy was running in the dark ahead of him. If she
still had her flashlight, she wasn’t using it. Luke had almost caught up with
her. We raced through the dark hallways, and I started to fall behind.

I’m not sure why I slowed down. An odd sensation
came over me, like a feeling of evil was filling the surrounding space. The
hallway seemed to stretch
out,
and Luke’s
light faded away in the distance. It wasn’t my imagination this time—it
was as if the darkness was alive and trying to crowd in on me. The air grew
heavy and the smell of blood filled my nostrils. With a rush of panic, I put on
a burst of speed. It was
only
when I
moved within a few feet of Luke that the strange feelings and smells vanished. What
the heck just happened?

Luke came to a dead halt.

I stopped just short of him.

He motioned with the flashlight. “She went in
there.”

I took a deep breath, and together we opened the
swinging metal doors before us. The room was dark except for one candle burning
in the far corner. Wendy’s silhouette was illuminated by its dim glow. As we
moved closer, Luke swung his flashlight around the room. It was empty. There
were a couple metal tables and some discarded equipment scattered across the
room. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

“I think this was the operating room.” Luke looked
around. “In the plans Wendy had, a whole wing for a hospital
was attached
to the asylum years ago. I think
that’s where we are.”

The candle was in the center of one of the metal tables
pushed against a wall. On either side of the candle were objects. As we got
closer, I could make them out: a piece of rope, a pink comb, a protection
pouch, a silver fork.

Wendy was standing in front of the candle. She
turned to us, her right hand behind her back. There was still no expression in
her eyes or on her face. She looked blankly at us and then held out her hand.
When she opened it, the medallion was in the middle of her palm.

I gasped. “What the…”

Suddenly Wendy’s eyes
blinked,
and she shook her head. She looked around at the room and
then at us. “What happened?”

“You don’t know? It was like you were in a
trance,” I answered.

She looked down at the medallion. “What’s this?”

I stepped forward and took the medallion out of
her hand. “It’s mine. I lost it a while back.”

Her expression was one of confusion. “But how did
I get here?”

“You started to run and we followed you here.”
Luke stepped closer to the candle.

Wendy turned and looked at the table behind her,
with its odd assortment of objects. I took a step forward. “What is it?” I
asked Luke.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Wendy said in a quiet voice, “An altar. It’s
his
.” She pointed at the comb. “Those
things are trinkets. Things he took from the people he killed.”

I’d read somewhere once that some serial killers
kept tokens from their victims. It gave them pleasure to hold them and relive,
for a moment, the killings. How did he get his hands on the medallion? The last
time I saw it, it had been in the bathtub, under the water by Dean’s head. Maybe
one of the orderlies swiped it? I wondered, as I held it, if maybe Larry had
stolen it.
Does the killer consider the
medallion a trophy from Larry’s murder
? The thought sickened me. I put the
medallion in my pocket and rubbed my hand up and down my pants, as if to wipe
it clean.

Larry was dead, his throat cut. The killer had
always made the deaths look like suicides or accidents. Why is he changing his
killing style? Why did he take out two people in the same day?

Wendy answered my unspoken questions. “He’s
melting down.”

Her words stopped me in my tracks. “The crazy guy
is losing it?”

“He’s panicked that you’re going to stop him. He’s
desperate now. Not thinking and planning anymore, just…reacting.”

“You can hear his thoughts?” I was keeping tabs on
Luke from the corner of my eye. He was looking carefully through the items on
the table.

“More like echoes,” Wendy answered.

“Where is he, Wendy?” I demanded.

She listened for a moment. “I can’t tell.”

“Do you think you could tell if you were near the
person his spirit’s squatting in?” I took a step closer to Luke.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“What if you…touched them?” I suddenly reached out,
grabbed Luke’s arm, and pulled him toward Wendy.

“Hey!” Luke said. “What’s going on?”

I ignored Luke and spoke to Wendy. “Put your hands
on him. Can you feel anything inside him?”

Luke’s expression portrayed first shock, and then
hurt. “You—you think the killer is inside
me
?”

This time my eyes met his. “I think the killer may
be inside Dean.”

We stood glaring at each other.

Luke finally broke the silence. “You didn’t bother
to mention your suspicions earlier because…”

“Because Dean can hear us.” My voice trembled a
bit as I added, “And…I don’t want to believe it.”
If Luke becomes the killer and comes at me, what will I do?
My
eyes scanned the room, looking for a
weapon. Even if I found one, would I be able to use it against him? If I hurt
him—if I killed him—the madman’s spirit would leave Dean’s body. Then,
technically, I would be killing Dean. And with Dean dead, Luke would vanish
back into the ether sea.
Dean dead, Luke
gone
… A shudder ran through me at the thought.