“Does that mean you do want to be with me?”
For weeks, he’d tried to put Evie out of his mind and heal. Their pretend romance hadn’t been pretend for him at all. But he had his pride, and he wasn’t about to let her know just how deeply he’d fallen. And then, when he’d seen her go off with Jericho to the collections room, he’d figured that was it. She liked the giant. The big, beautiful giant.
“Sheba, are you sure?” Sam asked.
Evie pulled his face toward hers with both hands. And then she kissed him. Deeply. The kiss was a surprise, but it only took seconds for it to rip away the scab on Sam’s heart, for him to lose himself to it. His brain was fighting to make sense of things: I’m in an asylum. Being chased by ghosts. Evie is kissing me. He didn’t know which of those seemed the most far-fetched.
Evie took his finger and put it in her warm mouth, sucking on it. It felt incredible. Sam gasped. “Do you like that?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“How about this?” She unbuttoned his shirt and moved her mouth across his chest, licking up his neck. He could feel himself hardening.
“Say… um. Where’d you learn to do that? I, uh, I wanna send that person a thank-you note.” Sam’s eyes fluttered.
“Kiss me,” Evie said again.
Sam cursed their timing. “I’d love to. But I left Conor around the cor—”
“Kiss me,” Evie said, pushing Sam against the brick wall.
He thought he saw just a hint of blue-gray smoke behind her and felt a chill that doused his passion fast.
“Say, Sheba. You find anything interesting in that washroom?” Sam said, moving slowly toward it.
“Why aren’t you kissing us?” Evie said, more insistently. But her voice sounded funny, like several voices speaking at once.
Sam yanked open the door to the washroom. There was a cracked window down at the end. The room was thick with vapory ghosts. Their teeth shone in the dark.
“Definitely not pickled herring,” Sam whispered.
Evie’s eyes tilted up. She shook as if learning a new dance.
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Sam grabbed Evie. “Come on, Sheba. Fight it.”
“We just want a kiss! A kiss to remember us by!” the ghosts inside her shrieked.
“They got inside her!” Conor said, racing toward her with a long hook he’d found.
“Whoa there!” Sam said, holding Conor back just as the ghosts inside Evie slipped out, leaving her dazed and staggering.
“Kiss us, kiss us!” the ghosts demanded.
“Sorry. I only date one at a time,” Sam said. He grabbed Evie’s hand and pushed Conor through the basement toward the stairs. The ghosts howled with anger.
“This way!” Conor led them into a cramped, unused room with a sweat box.
“How do you know where to go?” Sam panted.
“The lady,” Conor said. “Here.” He pointed to a window with no bars.
“Beautiful!” Sam snugged it open. “Ladies first.”
“Sam?” Evie said, coming around.
“Yeah. You’re gonna hate me for this but…” And with that, Sam pushed her out the window. Sam heard her land with an “Oof!” followed by an angry “Saaam!”
“She’s okay,” Sam said, nodding. “You next.”
Conor slid through the window and made the small drop to the ground. Sam followed. He slid down the muddy hill and nearly plummeted into the churning currents of the Hell Gate.
Evie yanked him to safety by the edge of his shirt, ripping it. “Thanks. You owe me a shirt,” Sam said.
“You owe me twenty dollars.”
Up front in the administration building, an antsy Theta smoked a cigarette and looked out at the rain and fog settling over the island. Memphis and the others had been gone a long time. Shouldn’t they be back by now? And where was Henry? It didn’t help that Isaiah was sullen and focusing all of his hostility on her.
“You wanna play cards?” she asked, a peace offering.
“No, thanks,” Isaiah mumbled as he drew.
“I know you don’t like me,” Theta said finally.
“Never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Isaiah cast a sidelong glance at Theta and went back to his sketching. “Since you been around, Memphis don’t have time to play ball with me or go to the games or nothing. He’d rather be with you.”
“Memphis loves you more than anybody.”
“No, he don’t.”
“Yes, he does.” Theta took a deep breath. “And anyway, I’m about to be around a lot less.”
“How come?”
“I got my reasons.”
“Swell. Now Memphis’ll blame me.”
“No. He won’t.”
“Yes, he will! When you’re a kid, you always get blamed for everything!” Isaiah said.
“You won’t get blamed for this,” Theta said sadly. She took a drag, let it out. “It really bugs you being treated like a kid.”
“And how,” Isaiah said on a sigh.
Theta stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re right. That’s not fair. Come on. Let’s go find the others.”
Isaiah looked wary. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Come on. Let’s ankle.”
Theta wanted this night to be over. Even more than the thought of spending the night in the asylum, she dreaded the conversation with Memphis to come.
It was the lights Theta noticed first as they approached ward A. They were winking on and off. It was disorienting. And very creepy. The doors were shut, but when Theta reached for the knob, they creaked open.
Isaiah stopped short. “I got a bad feeling.”
“Like a regular bad feeling, like your stomach hurts… or a we oughta run bad feeling?”
Isaiah was scared, but he didn’t want her to know it. Hadn’t he said he wanted to be treated like a big kid, like the rest of them? If he looked like a coward, they’d probably never let him come along again. He stepped into the corridor.
“Smoky in here,” Theta said, coughing. “Somebody musta forgot to open a flue or something.” As they made their way down the hall, Theta saw that the doors to the patients’ rooms were open, but many of the patients were missing. Others sat on their beds staring out.
“The Forgotten, the Forgotten, we are the Forgotten,” they whispered as Theta and Isaiah passed by.
Isaiah was truly frightened now. Even more so when he heard screams and deranged laughter coming from somewhere he couldn’t see. There were marks on the clean walls. Bloody handprints. The laughter got stronger.
“Theta,” he said.
“Yeah. I see,” she said. “I think we better turn back.”
They turned around and the doors slammed shut, sealing them inside.
Isaiah’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body shook. “We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more,” he said in a strangled whisper.
“Isaiah! Oh, please don’t do this, please don’t,” Theta begged.
Someone was coming toward them. A doctor moved carefully down the dim hall, pushing a wheelchair in front of him with a nurse seated there. His coat rested on the seat, across the nurse’s lap, and his shirtsleeves had been rolled to the elbows. The doctor’s head swept left and right, looking.