Apparition, page 25
He avoided looking at Ella, afraid of what he might do. He just counted the seconds as they passed and then got out of the car the instant the clock read eight. Visiting hours.
Matthew and Ella got out after him, holding hands once again and trailing him closely as he walked up to the front doors of Mount Shade.
He opened them, and the receptionist on duty – he thought this one’s name was Mary – nodded at him. “Here to see your wife?” she asked.
Shane’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and for a moment he couldn’t remember what he was doing here. He nodded dumbly. “Yes,” he heard himself say a moment later. “Yes we are.”
Mary smiled at something behind him. “Them, too?”
Shane looked back and was almost surprised to see Ella and Matthew there. They were looking around the small reception area with eyes that were wide and anxious. He realized with a jolt that this was the first time either had been to Mount Shade. They’d never come with him to visit Kari.
Again the anger rose inside him. Ingrates, he thought. Won’t even come to see their own mother.
“Mr. Wills?” said Mary. Shane realized she was still waiting for an answer to her question.
“You coming?” he asked the kids. The words were murmured, low and almost inaudible. They were also the best he could do. Speaking to them cost him almost too much. He didn’t want to talk to them. What he wanted was… something else.
Ella shook her head. Matthew didn’t speak, but took a half-step behind Ella that was answer enough. Shane turned back to Mary. “No,” he said. “Just me.” Then, abruptly, he remembered why they were here. “Is Ben working right now?”
Shane said a small prayer as the nurse looked down, apparently checking the desktop computer for an answer. If Ben wasn’t working, there was no way he would be able to do what he needed to do.
Mary nodded. “Yep. Want me to page him?”
“Please.”
Mary lifted a phone receiver and spoke into it, quick words whispered in the same tones someone might use during a funeral. Shane stood at the desk and waited for what seemed like far too long. He more than half expected the door to the hospital to slam open and spew out slab-faced orderlies who would quickly subdue him before escorting him into Mount Shade not as a guest, but as a patient. Every second that passed solidified his conviction that the people here knew what was going on; that they were part of some vast conspiracy meant to destroy him.
And what is going on? he wondered. To that, he had no answer. He knew only that he was changing, losing himself in thoughts that were his but not his, that came from his own mind but were at the same time alien and strange.
A muted buzz sounded, and the hospital door opened. Ben’s head peered around the edge of the door, his face splitting wide open in his trademark grin as he saw Shane.
“Mr. Wills!” said Ben.
“Hey, Ben.” Shane barely managed to respond, still half-waiting to be dragged away screaming in a straightjacket.
Ben frowned. “You okay?”
Shane nodded, not trusting his voice this time. He stepped toward Ben, but the orderly stepped the rest of the way through the door and let it shut behind him.
“These them?” he said. Shane had no idea what the man was talking about for a moment, then realized that the nurse was looking past him. Shane turned to follow Ben’s gaze and saw Ella and Matthew were now sitting on an industrial-looking plastic bench that hunkered against the wall next to the reception desk. “These your kids?” he added.
Shane nodded, still mute. Ben’s stride took him past the front desk and to the kids. He held a hand out to them, his smile widening to a point that seemed almost cartoonish. “You must be Ella,” he said. “And Matthew.”
Neither of the kids accepted his outstretched hand. Ben waited a moment, then dropped the hand to his side. His smile never faltered, though. Shane realized he probably had to contend with people like this fairly regularly – people who had been through some trauma that had forever changed them, had marked them indelibly with the dye of tragedy.
You have no idea, Shane thought to himself. He fought back the urge to rush past Ben and grab his children and strangle them both right there in the reception area.
You have no idea at all.
Ben kneeled down in front of the kids. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad to meet you both.” He reached out slowly and touched Matthew’s knee, then Ella’s. It would have been a somewhat ominous move had any other adult man touched his children like that, but Shane could tell the nurse had nothing but compassion for the kids.
“You hang in there,” said Ben, then stood and turned back to Shane. “You ready?” he asked.
Shane nodded. He threw a last look at Ella and Matthew, but the two of them were staring straight ahead, clearly avoiding his gaze. Then he was through the door and into the hospital area, the kids shielded from his view by the thick door.
Ben was speaking, talking nonsense about the weather and the food and a host of other mundane topics. Shane sensed he was doing it on purpose, trying to move past the uncomfortable vibe of the kids and bring Shane into a more pleasant reality – as if that were even remotely possible in the halls of Mount Shade.
Shane started to slow. Ben noticed immediately. “Come on, Mr. Wills. Don’t want to get lost in here.” The nurse waggled his eyes as though he had just seen a cartoon ghost hiding nearby. Shane stopped walking. “Mr. Wills?” said Ben. “Your wife is feeling better. What happened before isn’t going to happen again, I’m sure of it.”
“I’m not here to see her, Ben,” said Shane.
Ben cocked his head to the side, the confusion easily read on his wide-open face. “What do you mean?”
“I’m here to see someone else.”
Ben’s grin reappeared, but there was an edge to it now, caution and wariness sharpening it into something no longer wholly pleasant. “Shoot, Mr. Wills,” he said. “You know I can’t let you talk to just anyone. You’re only approved to visit your wife.”
“I know,” Shane said. His mouth, dry only a moment before, now thickened with phlegm. He had an urge to spit. “I know,” he repeated. “But Ben, this isn’t a visit to just anyone, or for some unimportant reason. I need to talk to someone about my children, Ben, about my kids.” The words were coming fast, as though he knew his only hope was to overwhelm the nurse with the volume of his thoughts, rather than by their reasonableness and logic. “There’s someone in here who knows about them, Ben. Someone who’s coming after them or has something to do with someone else who’s coming after them. They’re in danger, Ben, and I need to talk to this person, to this man, or they could die.”
The smile gradually drooped off Ben’s face. He shook his head again, but slowly. “I don’t know, Mr. Wills. That’s… I could lose my job.”
“Ben, please,” Shane said. He was almost whining now, nearly begging this person he barely knew in spite of the fact that he had been seeing him weekly for almost a year now. “Please, it’s important. It’s my kids’ lives, Ben.”
The nurse still looked unconvinced, but the look on his face seemed a bit less hard than it had only a moment before.
“What’s going on with them?” he asked.
“Someone is… harassing them, I guess you could say. They’re in danger, I’m sure of it.” Shane spoke as forcefully as he could, his voice echoing in the deserted hall of the hospital. He left out the part about the danger to his kids coming from himself. “I think it’s someone who had to do with some murders. The Oliver Hanson murders.”
Ben’s face grew suddenly tight. “You want to talk to old Ollie?”
Shane flashed to the picture in the news article: the young man with his snakelike birthmark, eyes half-closed as though still gripped by the vestiges of a powerful dream. Then the picture merged with the mental image of the old man in the asylum, the man who had slammed his hands against the glass and screamed –
(She’ll get you, you know…. You can’t escape! She’ll cut you and gut you and you won’t remember a thing!)
– strange and blood-curdling threats through his cell door.
Shane nodded. “Yeah. I want to talk to old Ollie.”
Ben no longer looked confused. He looked concerned. Afraid, even. He stared at Shane for a long time and Shane found himself thinking about whether he could escape from this moment, from this place before Ben just blew on a whistle or made a call on a walkie-talkie and got Shane admitted with his wife.
Ben’s eyes roved across Shane’s face for a long time. He felt like the nurse was trying to read him like a book, trying to ferret out whatever secrets he might hold. Shane almost wished he would pull out his secrets. Because maybe the nurse would be able to explain them to him.
Ella dead. Blood at her throat. Matthew dead. His eyes gouged out.
He coughed to cover up the smile that wanted to spring unbidden to his lips.
Ben frowned. He knows, Shane thought. He knows I want to kill them.
He tensed again for the inevitable alarm call, but Ben just nodded curtly. “Just through the door. You ain’t going into his room.”
Relief flooded through Shane. “Fine,” he said with an explosive breath. “Fine. Thanks, Ben. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” said the nurse. He sounded almost surly, as though he resented doing the favor. Maybe he did. Maybe he was worried about losing his job. Shane suspected that he would lose his position if anything happened here. He almost asked Ben why he was letting him see Hanson, but decided against it. He wanted answers, and trying to convince the nurse out of his decision to help seemed like a bad idea.
It seemed like only a moment before they had arrived. Shane would have walked right past the spot, which looked just like every other square foot of hallway they had passed through, but Ben stopped suddenly and turned to look at one of the doors and Shane knew they were at Hanson’s door. As before, the man’s cell was dark. Shane wondered how that could be. He had assumed that all the cell lights were on a timer – certainly he had never seen a light switch in his wife’s room – but Hanson’s lights were definitely off. He couldn’t see a thing through the small window in the door.
Ben flicked his nightstick against the door. “Oliver!” he said loudly. “Hey, Hanson, get up!” The nurse touched the wall next to the door and Shane realized that the light switch for the room was there. So how did the lights turn off inside the cell?
He didn’t have a chance to figure that out. The lights came on in the cell and Shane jumped as the cadaverous face of Oliver Hanson appeared not six inches away from the window. The man was smiling, his lips chapped and raw as though he had been spending too much time in the wind. His red birthmark seemed angrier than it had before, a livid mark that seemed almost bloody against his ghost-white skin.
“I knew you’d come,” he said. “Sooner or later, I knew you’d come.”
Shane checked an urge to look behind him, as though Hanson might be speaking to someone hiding in the hallway. But he knew there was no one there. And he knew that Oliver wasn’t just raving, wasn’t just giving voice to mad utterances. His voice was calm. “I knew you’d come,” he said again.
Cool fear spread through Shane’s body. It started at his toes, like he was inching into a pool of ice water. It moved to his feet and legs, spreading up and out as it reached his groin and torso. Shane had to fight a very real urge to run. He thought of Ella, of Matthew. He was all they had. They were depending on him. So he didn’t run. Instead, he drew close to the door, so close that he could see his breath fogging the glass.
“What happened to your son?” he asked.
Hanson’s wide grin faltered for a moment. His cheeks grew red and his wound of a mouth stretched into a rictus of madness. The man laughed giddily. “They say I killed him,” he finally said, gasping as he got the words out between a fit of giggles. “That I killed him with a knife. But I didn’t.” He laughed again, bending over and holding his stomach. Then he straightened and hammered a fist into the window. “I didn’t!” he screamed. His voice sounded suddenly wild and dangerous, the snarl of a feral cat about to attack its prey or defend its home.
“Then….” Shane searched for something to say. He didn’t even know why he was here, really. Hanson had been a part of something at the house where Shane now lived with what remained of his family, sure. But what did that really mean? Did he expect the madman to explain what was happening around him and to him?
Sure. Makes sense. Ask a madman when you want answers to crazy questions.
“If you didn’t kill him,” he finally said, “then who did?”
Hanson’s grin returned, bright and wet in the white light of his cell. His eyes rolled back slightly as though he had suddenly found himself in a pleasant fantasy. “It starts with the dreams, you know. Dreams. Like something’s in the house with you. Crawling on you.” His hand went to his cheek, caressing the skin with a hand that was bent and claw-like. “Crawling in you.”
Hanson shivered and fell silent. Shane looked at Ben as though to ask the nurse what should happen next. The other man just stared at him, impassive. Waiting, no doubt, for Shane to fall far enough of his own personal rocker that the nurse would be able to get him admitted here.
Well not me, shit-face.
Shane was dimly aware of the thought, and even more dimly aware how unlike him it was. He was still changing. Metamorphosing into something new. Something horrible.
Something better.
Hanson started talking again and Shane forced himself to listen to what he was saying – anything to change his focus from the thoughts that seemed to be invading his mind.
“It comes closer, and closer,” whispered Hanson. His eyes were far away again. Shane couldn’t tell if he was reliving a cherished dream or a terrifying nightmare. “And then you don’t remember any more. Until it’s over. Until the baby has been eaten. Until the blood has been spilt.”
Shane glanced at Ben. He wondered if this made any sense to the man, but the look on Ben’s face instantly answered that question in the negative. He caught Shane’s eye and shrugged, a “hell-if-I-know” shrug that clearly communicated his lack of understanding.
Shane leaned even closer to the glass window that separated him and Hanson. The old man leaned in as well, as though the two of them were strangely warped reflections of one another – the before and after picture that would show the effects of madness on a man.
Out loud, he said, “Mr. Hanson, I’m worried that whatever… took… your child… has come for mine.” He didn’t know what he was going to say until the words had already come. He hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t planned it. But he knew the words were the right ones. The ones that needed to be said. He was vaguely aware that Ben was staring at him like perhaps the wrong person was locked up, but he didn’t care.
Hanson’s expression was blank. He looked like he had retreated not only from the conversation but from the entirety of the universe. “Mr. Hanson?” Shane reached up and put his fingertips against the small window. “You hear me? Mr. Hanson?”
Hanson didn’t respond. For a long time he just stood there, motionless and staring into empty space. Then he suddenly shrieked and threw himself at the door. The door was steel, unyielding as the side of a skyscraper. Still, Shane stepped back as though expecting it to crumple and fall to pieces under the old man’s attack. Hanson was shrieking, smashing himself into the door over and over again and then he raised his hand and pointed at Shane. Shane noticed that the old man’s arms were scarred: knife or razor scars that criss-crossed his arms in patterns that were all-too familiar.
Shane’s horrified gaze was riveted to the scars for a moment. Then movement caught his eye. He looked at the window. Not through it this time but at it. Something dark moved across the glass. Black legs, cloaked in funereal shadow as they clicked across the window.
A roach.
Shane stepped back automatically. At the same time, Hanson stretched out a shaking finger. He pointed at the roach.
“It’s here. It’s here, you brought it, it’s here!”
The lights in the cell flickered suddenly, then went out. Shane cast a glance at Ben, but knew that the nurse had not moved – he hadn’t been the one to turn out the lights. An instant later screams started chopping through the hall – jagged, sharp screams that cut at Shane’s ears and made him want to scream as well.
Ben moved almost instantly. He shouldered Shane aside. “Move!” he shouted at the same time, though it was hardly necessary since Shane had already stumbled completely out of his way. Ben flicked the light switch next to the cell door, clicking it up-down-up-down-up. The light in the dark room flickered on, but only for a second at a time. Shane could see inside the cell, but it was like he was watching something during a lightning storm. He could only see flashes, a movie with critical frames missing from the reel.
