XXVI - Charlie
Charlie held tight onto Paige’s hand. She kept a brisk pace, one he found a little
difficult to keep up with. Her eyes
remained locked straight ahead, for all that he continued looking up at her,
seeking comfort. Behind them the voices
from the cells echoed out along the cold, granite-walled corridor, only growing
more and more hysterical as time went on, but fading slightly, just slightly,
as they put distance between them.
He was too scared to talk and, for whatever reason, Paige
remained silent as well. She led them
purposefully; as if she knew where she was going, but the hospital had changed
so much around them that Charlie doubted this could really be the case. All he could do was hope she had some reason
for her actions and that they would find a way out soon. He was beginning to wish he was back outside
in the cold. At least it had been quiet
out there. At least everything remained
the way it should be.
They moved along corridor after corridor. Each one seemed the same: long, dimly lit by
gas lamps, cold and empty. Doors and
windows broke the monotony, but they looked onto darkness and were so plain and
austere themselves that they provided no comfort. Charlie was glad that Paige did not stop by any of them.
A while after the voices had faded a new sound entered
his perception. There was a faint
whispering, almost like leaves in the wind.
He strained to hear it over the regular sound of their footsteps, but it
was growing clearer all the time and it was soon clear enough to recognise it
for what it was.
His grip tightened convulsively around Paige’s fingers,
but Paige did not respond. He glanced
up at her again, but her focus was unwavering.
“…to check… …ward 19…”
Being able to make out some of the words was no
comfort. He didn’t understand them and
voices, where there was no one to produce them, could never be
encouraging. Though he did not know it
at the time, he was now much closer to understanding Paige’s fear.
“…patient needs… …be treated with… …treme care…”
Though the voices were growing louder, none of them
managed above a whisper, reinforcing the sense that they were not really there,
at all. The number of voices increased
as well as the volume. Charlie was
beginning to feel that they were walking through a crowd of whispering ghosts.
“…tell the nurses… …ychotic incidents… …to be
restrain…”
And then they turned a corner and he could see them
at last. They were like ghosts,
translucent people, only their upper halves truly visible, drifting along the
corridor as if they had legs to propel them.
Several of them appeared to be men with beards, some of them greying,
dressed in suits and occasionally carrying clipboards or notebooks. Beside them stood a few women who were
clearly nurses. There were others as
well, sitting or lying on benches along the corridors edge, passing the suited
men, collapsing to the floor. Everything
seemed to gain solidity, the people were gradually becoming opaque and the
voices finally grew above a whisper.
The final pieces of this new reality fell into place
almost instantly and for Charlie it was like recovering after being under the
water in a swimming pool. Suddenly
sound rushed in and everything became as if it had always been. He and Paige were walking along a busy
hospital corridor as doctors and nurses made their way through a waiting list
of patients to be seen and treated. It
was just like any hospital he had ever seen or imagined, except the walls were
still plain granite and the doctors didn’t have white coats and all the
patients’ clothes seemed very old-fashioned, like out of one of those dramas
his mother had watched until his father inevitably cursed at her and switched
over to the football, before she left.
He was walking, hand in hand with Paige, through a corridor in the past.
His sense of wonder temporarily overcame his
fear. He gazed around at all the faces
and wondered who these people were and if they could see him. A glance up at Paige suggested that she
could not see them, or was, perhaps, choosing not to see them, so he ignored
all but her reassuring grip and watched the ghost hospital instead.
Then Paige froze on the spot. Charlie gave her another quick glance and
saw that her eyes were fixed, terrified on a spot ahead of them. He turned back to look, just as a scream
shattered the chaotic murmuring of the crowd.
A woman was stumbling forwards, through the throng,
clutching her swollen belly as blood dripped from under her skirts, pooling on
the tiled floor. She was screaming the
whole time and her face was contorted into an expression so grotesque that
Charlie could almost feel her pain.
Paige’s grip tightened once more and Charlie squeezed back.
A nurse was rushing forwards. People were clearing a path and woman
stumbled through it in her pain haze, a blood wake behind her.
“Doctor Masson,” cried the first nurse to reach the
woman, even as she had to hold her to stop her from falling, “she’s having a
miscarriage, she-” but before she could finish the woman fell to the floor and
began convulsing, her arms thrashing about and knocking the nurse over beside
her.
“Nurse Booth!” another nurse called as she rushed to
her side. The rest of the crowd was
becoming increasingly distant. “Nurse
Booth, are you alright?”
Then there was a sudden loud groan that seemed to
shake the hospital. Charlie felt a
shiver of icy recognition running down his spine. It was just like the sound he had heard when he was alone at the
other end of the building. The world
seemed to dim. He saw the crowd,
doctors, nurses and patients all alike, glancing around them in
uncertainty. The second nurse was
clutching ‘Nurse Booth’ and both were staring at the woman on the floor,
writhing about now, moving in a way no human muscle ever should. Charlie thought of snakes, of squid, of
insects, nothing quite matched the movements.
Blood was still pouring from between her legs as she thrashed, smearing
it across the floor.
The groan came again and the dimming increased. It was like reality was a flickering
fluorescent lamp, just about to burn out.
There was a sound like water dripping, something splashing through mud
and then a monster, like those Charlie had seen in the apartments, dropped from
the ceiling. There was a chorus of
screaming as the creature seemed to take in its surroundings and the crowd
tried to disperse, then it leapt high into the air, over the woman and the two
nurses. It landed on one of the doctors
and began devouring his face. Charlie
saw strips of flesh, muscle and skin, pulled away with gut-churning elasticity,
dripping blood all around.
The woman’s convulsions began to subside. Her screams were changing pitch and
quality. It was clear she was
dying. Something slid out into the
blood at her feet, the monster stopped its terrible meal and turned to look,
crawling along the floor towards the bloody mess and then pausing, sniffing the
air and pawing at the gore. Then the
lights seemed to flicker back on in reality and the monster appeared to peel
away, like strips of old paint, into the air above it. The woman moved no more and the nurses were
left, shaking, on the floor beside her, with the dead doctor a few paces away.
Paige and Charlie remained frozen where they were,
but Charlie knew the show was nearly over as the sense of clarity was fading
from everything and the nurses’ sobs had become whispers once more. Somehow he knew that’s all it was – a scene
someone or something wanted them to see – and so he tried to take in every
horrific detail, knowing that at least some of it must be important.
Just as the images faded completely he saw a figure
running around the corner ahead, where all the patients had fled. He was a middle aged man in a dark suit,
whose appearance was strangely familiar, but who was fading too quickly to get
a good impression of. The last detail
Charlie took in before they were completely alone once more was the man’s
expression. It was a look of horror,
yet also of relief. Then he was gone.
Paige let out a shuddering sigh beside him and he
felt her grip loosen. He looked up at
her. She was crying again. He still wasn’t sure if she had seen what he
had, but he knew that it was no good standing around anymore. He let go of her hand and began to walk
along the corridor towards the corner.
“Charlie, don’t..” came Paige’s tired voice from
behind him, but he continued on anyway, gaining pace as he did so.
“No, Charlie, come back.” He was starting to
run. The corner was just ahead, so
tantalising.
“Charlie, what are you doing?” her voice was
stronger now, filled with fear, and he could hear her trying to run after
him. He reached the corner, felt a
sudden rush of hope, then he turned and-
The corridor he found himself in looked like any
other in a modern hospital; beige walls, strip lighting, notice boards and
peeling linoleum. It ended, just a few
feet away, in an elevator. There was
the sound of a bell chiming and then the doors slid open, just as Paige rounded
the corner.
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