“So what was the creature?” Rebecca asked.
“Many that have seen it believe it’s a demon,” he said. “It looks like a human but isn’t. Crawls on the ceiling and walls.”
And it totally just got worse. That was what the bad thing was. A demon.
A motherfucking demon.
I started to think that maybe Pippa’s warning hadn’t been a figment of my imagination after all.
“Does it ever hurt anyone?” Dex asked in a low voice.
Oldman shook his head and stuck a toothpick between his teeth. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen it. That doesn’t mean it’s not there but…as you can tell, this place will play tricks on you. There’s too much history, too many people who have passed through these walls. You never know what you’re going to get here. And I find that fascinating.” He looked up at the fourth floor. “On second thought, do you mind if we skip that floor? You’re welcome to take a quick look but that whole thing I said earlier about not pushing my luck…”
“No, that’s totally cool,” I said a little too gratefully.
“Do you mind if I just shoot a few seconds?” Of course Dex had to ask that.
Oldman shook his head and sauntered over to the window on the landing, hands behind his back. “Go ahead.”
Rebecca decided to go up with Dex while I stayed at the historian’s side as he looked out the window.
“You know,” I admitted, hoping that talking would calm my heart rate down, “before I knew about this place, I had no idea that sanatoriums existed.”
He smiled quietly. “That was the same back then. Despite these hospitals all over the country—despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people came to them to die—everyone liked to pretend that this didn’t exist. But it did. You can shuffle people away into isolated buildings and lock them up with false promises of a cure. But the patients, the ones that never saw their families again, they didn’t forget. It’s no wonder this place is haunted. All the ghosts here just want someone to talk to, someone to recognize that they exist, even when they don’t.”
“And the demon thing?” I said, my voice shaking slightly.
“Maybe some ghosts don’t want attention. Maybe they just want to inflict the pain and terror that they felt every day. Maybe some are too far gone in their hate and revenge that they cease to be ghosts and become something else.” He spoke quietly as he leaned in closer and speared me with a shrewd gaze. “Have you seen it?”
I felt like my throat was closing up. I nodded slowly.
He made an “ah” face, then said calmly, “You’ve got a nice energy about you. They like that.”
“Okay,” Dex said loudly as he jogged down the stairs with Rebecca at his side. “There wasn’t too much to see up there. Looks pretty much the same as the second floor, although I think I located the door to the body chute.”
“Dangerous thing,” Oldman commented. “You know they found a runaway girl in there one year. She’d snuck in by the post office and then got stuck for a few days.”
“Post office?” I asked.
“There’s an abandoned one down the road. The body chute actually goes all the way in. It’s a real long walk in a very dark place.”
I shot Dex a look to warn him to not even think about it, but Oldman went on, “After that, they boarded it up around the post office so you couldn’t get in. Or out, I suppose.” He glanced at his watch.”Well, I’m afraid it’s time for me to go. I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of the Sea Crest Sanatorium.”
We walked down the stairs, and with each landing we reached, my shoulders felt lighter and lighter. Once we got to the main floor, the first bell rang and teachers began scurrying about, and I started to feel like I was back in my own skin again.
“And I hope you be extra careful while you’re here,” Oldman said to me just before he walked off into the sunshine.
“What did he say?” Dex asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing I wasn’t already thinking.”
CHAPTER TEN
After we’d gone through the tour, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to Brenna about her experience with the bad thing. In fact, I was so close to suggesting we head out into Tillamook to get some food while we could, just to be in the sunshine and see the freedom of the waves, when Kelly came looking for us while we were sprawled in the teacher’s lounge.
“Hi there,” she said in her quiet voice, her hair gathered delicately around her face. “Brenna wanted to let you know that she had to go home sick and that she’ll take a rain check for tomorrow.”
“Oh no,” I said, straightening up in my chair. “Is she okay?”
She nodded. “I took a quick look at her. It’s probably food poisoning or a 24-hour bug. She’ll be fine.”
“What about her students?” Dex asked. “What do they do if she’s not there to teach? Is there a sub?”
I gave him a look. “You better not be thinking about teaching art, Dex, because I’ve seen your drawings.” Nude drawings, I wanted to add. Like, Anime porn.
“There’s no sub for her class on such short notice,” Kelly said. “The kids get an extra hour of recess with either me or one of the lunch ladies supervising. I’ll just take them out in the front yard where it’s sunny, let them run around.”
“Can we come watch?” Dex asked, getting off the couch, mug of coffee in his hands.
“Dex…” Rebecca said in a warning tone, not getting what he was doing.
Kelly shrugged with one shoulder and smiled shyly. “Sure. I bet you guys need some sun after being in here all morning.”
She was right about that. After she left, I got up and poked Dex in the side. “What’s your deal, mister?”
He eyed us both like we were morons. “If Brenna isn’t there, then we can talk to the kid. Jody.”
“I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do,” Rebecca cautioned. “I think we need permission.”
“It doesn’t have to be on camera,” Dex said adamantly. “And besides, you’re losing your touch, producer lady. You need to be thinking about the big picture here. Roll with the punches, turn disappointment into opportunity.”
“I think you’ve gone mad,” Rebecca said, swiping his coffee out of his hand. “But I see what you’re saying.”
I didn’t really care either way; I just wanted to be outside in the sunshine.
Though the playground and small sports field was in the back of the building, the amount of trees kept the sun from reaching the ground. Out in the front there were wide fields on either side of the driveway, with picnic tables scattered about. We plunked ourselves down at one with microwaved meals and tried to eat all the while wondering which kid was Jody.
Eventually, however, she found us.
“Are you the ghost hunters?” a little girl asked as she walked toward us. I noticed an orange rubber ball in her hands. The sunshine in her blonde hair and the green freshness of the grass made everything look so wholesome, but that damn ball was a weighty reminder of what was always present at this place.
“That we are,” Dex said with a wide, welcoming smile. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Jody,” she said, rubbing at her nose. She was a cute kid with big blue eyes, a little on the short side for her age, dressed head to toe in a matching pink leopard sweat suit. “Miss Brenna went home sick today.”
“We heard,” Rebecca said. I was surprised to see how warm her features became as she addressed her. “But the nurse Kelly said she would be fine. She’ll probably be back tomorrow, feeling as good as new.”
Jody shrugged and started twisting back and forth at the waist. “I guess. I was sick for a while.”
“Were you?” I asked, even though Brenna had told us.
“Yes,” she said. “I had consumption.”
I nearly spit out my orange juice. Rebecca recovered faster than I did.
“Consumption?” she repeated. “I don’t think you had that.”
“I did,” Jody said like it wasn’t a big deal. “The nurse said it wasn’t and my doctor Willard said it wasn’t, but Elliot said it was. I was coughing up blood. He said that’s how it happened to him.” She stopped twisting and looked me right in the eye. “Shawna told me I’d never see my family again.”
She kept staring at me to the point where Dex and Rebecca glanced over to see what was going on.
“Who is Shawna?” I asked gingerly, trying to keep my voice light and breezy.
“Shawna isn’t my friend. She doesn’t like that Elliot pays attention to me. And she doesn’t like you.”
I felt like walls were closing in on me. “She doesn’t like me?” I barely got out. “I’ve never met her. We just got here yesterday.”
“She says she saw you earlier when you were looking in her room,” Jody said matter-of-factly. “She’s looking at you right now.”
Oh, Jesus. Oh, just no. “What?”
Jody pointed at the building. I followed her finger to the second floor windows. I didn’t see anything there; the sun was shining off the broken panes. “I…I don’t see anything,” I told her.
“She’s there,” she said assuredly. “You just have to look for her.”
Fuck that. I leaned forward, looking at Jody more closely. “Why doesn’t Shawna like me?” I whispered.
She shrugged again and went back to twisting. “I dunno. Maybe you won’t play with her. Or maybe the bad thing is telling her not to like you.”
My eyes flew over to Dex. I could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, worry in his eyes. I looked back at Jody. “What is the bad thing?”
“I dunno,” she said again. Then her face brightened. “I used to be afraid of it, but then one day Shawna said it was her pet, and she had it on a leash. I was more afraid when it was running around loose. That’s how it got Miss Brenna one day.”