“But I can tell you,” he continued, “whatever is wrong with him is nothing to sneeze at. All of these pills combined…I’m surprised he’s acting as normal as he is. Though there is something off about him. About both of you.”
“Me?” I asked, sticking the phone back in my purse, feeling dirty about everything.
He leaned on his messy stacks of papers. “You know this. You’re ghost hunters. You see things that aren’t there.”
I heard what could have been a car door slam from outside.
“I have to go,” I said, turning for the door. “Please don’t tell Dex about this. I just needed to know.”
He took one look at my face and nodded. “I won’t. You just need to watch yourselves. And try to communicate. Most ghosts come up when we can’t express ourselves.”
I nodded and gave him a quick smile. I left the room and quickly scampered down the hallway toward the doors. He wasn’t there yet.
I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the glass. I was shaking slightly from the overall icky feeling of going behind Dex’s back like that. And the fact that the answers didn’t help. Severe hallucinations? What had Dex been seeing? And a mystery pill? What was going on?
As gross and immoral as I felt, I still had one more part of the plan that I was going to try to squeak through. It would also take a bit of luck and timing, but I felt I had both on my side tonight. As well as a touch of evil, which was certainly helping me follow through.
Soon, Dex appeared at the door like a drowned rat, gear in both hands. He looked so helpless in the rain, waiting for me, his dark, shaggy hair wet and flat against his head, the water dripping off the edge of his nose. I walked to the door and laid my hands against the cold glass. He watched me, expectantly, maybe a bit curious as to why I was watching him and not immediately letting him in.
I’m doing this because I love you, I thought. And that makes it OK.
I stared at him, through the pane, deep into his eyes, which were even darker in the night, with the brazen glare of the outside lights casting shadows on his handsome face. I loved him and I needed to know the truth.
Finally I opened the door with two hands, pushing hard against it, and Dex stepped in, sopping wet and dripping on the floor.
“Weren’t going to let me in?” he asked, sounding mock hurt. “Second thoughts? Gonna stay here overnight instead?”
I laughed, small and a bit forced, and shut the door behind him. “Thought I would take over Roundtree’s job. It looked fulfilling.”
I took some equipment into my hands and we made our way to the third floor through the nearest stairwell. It was lit, but with a weak, cheap light that made us both look green.
We reached the third floor and pushed the stairwell door open. The floor was completely dark except for the light coming through the stairwell windows at both ends. I immediately wanted to turn and leave but the door shut behind us with an ominous click that echoed down the empty hall.
“OK, this is fucking creepy,” I said.
“Agreed. Which is why it’s perfect.”
I gave Dex a look. He smiled at me and popped a piece of Nicorette in his mouth with his free hand. “Shall we get set up?”
I nodded and he brought out a tiny lantern from his pocket to provide a bit more light for our faint area. The only problem with that was that it made the rest of the floor look even darker than it was. Uneasy shadows danced down the corridor, tricks of the eye.
Out of his pack he brought out the EVP gadget, the first time I had ever really seen it. He had gotten it over the last week. It was supposed to pick up Electronic Voice Phenomenon, you know, like the hidden voices and sounds that we couldn’t hear properly with our own ears. The whole idea of using the EVP freaked the hell out of me, but holding the walkie talkie-sized gadget in my hands (it was really nothing more than a gimmicky tape recorder) made the unknown at least a bit familiar.
“Want to try that out tonight?” he asked, noting the way I was cradling it like some alien baby.
“I guess,” I said reluctantly. “Though I’m not sure what we could pick up. This is like the quietest mental hospital ever.”
He paused as he fiddled with the large camera on the ground, rocking slightly on his haunches.
“And how many mental hospitals have you been in?” he asked. Though his voice was low, he sounded a bit defensive and I couldn’t blame him for that.
I didn’t answer. He didn’t look too annoyed, though it was hard to tell from the light source.
“Besides, we’re on the third floor,” he continued, voice softer. “There’s nothing up here. And even if there were patients up here...you know, it’s not like the movies.”
I shrugged. “I know. Sorry. I just thought there would be screaming people or…”
“Like I said. It’s not like the movies.”
“Sorry Dex,” I mumbled, feeling ashamed.
“Don’t be. I’m not mad, I’m just saying. Not all mental hospitals mean the people behind the doors are all raving loons and wrapped up in straightjackets. I’m pretty sure that the second floor is just a bunch of rooms where you’ll find some pretty sad but fairly normal people going about their nightly business.”
“And the first floor?”
“I could smell the cafeteria was at the end of the hall, beyond the doctor’s office. Probably the communal rec room too. This isn’t a horrible place, Perry. And the people here have probably been here for a long time. Time obliterates the screams. Medication and time.”
“How long did it take for you?” I asked him, knowing full-well he wouldn’t tell me.
He got to his feet with his camera firmly in hand and looked me square in the face with a peculiarly blank expression.
“It took six months.”
I was surprised at that. At the swiftness of time, at his blunt admission. Oh, how I wanted to keep asking him, to keep peeling back the layers and find out more. I chanced it.
“And how long did you have to stay there in total?”
He sighed and rubbed his chin with his free hand, chewing his gum slowly, his eyes staring off into the blackness. “Two years.”
My mouth dropped open. Two years. In a mental institute for two whole years? A place like this one? It made my heart cave in. “Why…why were you there so long? If you were better in six months?”
He kept his eyes focused on the dark. I could see they were shiny and reflective, bouncing back what little light we had. “It’s not so easy to just leave. They have to make sure you won’t endanger yourself.”
“Did you…endanger yourself?” I asked quietly. It was so personal, so fragile of a question, I was afraid he was going to bolt and run like an unbroken horse.
“That’s how I got there,” he said calmly, finally turning his head to look at me. “I had my reasons. As I’m sure you did too.”
“Me?” I repeated. “I never tried to kill myself. What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t say you tried to kill yourself. I never really did, either. It was just…a misunderstanding. As I’m sure your accident was too.”
He used quote marks around “accident.” I frowned at him, trying to figure out what he was getting at and what he knew about this accident I had.
“What do you know about this accident? I haven’t talked to you about it.”
He raised one brow, which created a spear of a shadow across his face.
“I guess you haven’t. My bad.”
I didn’t trust that. I wracked my brain to see if I had said anything in the last few days…or even ever. Aside from my cousins mentioning some accident to him once, and telling him I had dreams about my high school days, I hadn’t said anything to him. I know I hadn’t because it was something I rarely let myself think about.
“And anyway, after a while, the hospital was the only home I had. The friends I had before eventually stopped coming to visit. I had no family. There was nothing left out there for me. Everything I had come to know and rely on was in the institute. So even when I could tell they were thinking of releasing me one year in, I did what I could to stay longer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling stupid.
He tilted his head at me and smiled. “It’s in the past.”
Was it? My past had been coming to haunt me lately. Was it the same for him?
“I don’t know about you,” he said while coming over to me and taking the EVP device out of my hands. “But I think we need to get a move on. We’ve already wasted time talking about stuff that we could discuss any other time.”
I nearly laughed at that but I managed to stifle it in my throat. Any other time always meant never with Dex. I doubted I’d ever hear any more about his time in the hospital. But in a way, that was OK with me. Because I had a feeling he had told me more than he had ever told anyone else. And that made me feel…well…special.
We got the rest of the equipment ready as quickly as we could, while Dex plotted out how we were going to use what precious time we had.
He pointed down the hall. “If you go just a few feet in front of me…”
I did as he asked and stopped just where the lantern light failed to reach.
“I’ll have you introduce us. Keep your voice lower than normal, just in case; this mic should pick it up here, no problem. And just walk slowly down the hall. I’ll turn on the infrared.”
“And if I walk into something?” I asked.