Be Not Afraid (16 page)

Dominic’s face seemed to drain of blood. “That’s Cassie. And the only one up there right now is Miss Peale, the day nurse. We have to help.”

I pulled my hand out of his and held back. “I can’t. I don’t want to go up there.”

“Marin.” Dominic braced himself. “Please. I know it’s not fair that you’re involved in all of this, but I can’t change that now. I need you.” He paused, breathing hard. “She needs you. She’ll feel better when she sees you’re here. Remember? And then she’ll calm down again. Just like last time.”

A door slammed. Another scream.

I resisted, a sob clutching at the back of my throat.
I don’t want to see it again. I don’t want to see any of it.
But Dominic’s face was so wrought with terror, the pleading in
his eyes as real as anything I’d ever seen before; I couldn’t bring myself to turn away. I was still part of this, however unwillingly. There was no point in denying it anymore, no use in running.

“Don’t you leave me,” I ordered.

He held out his hand, and I took it. Side by side, we raced up another flight of stairs and then stopped, trying to survey the situation.

The third floor looked nothing like the first two. The floors were bare, and the smooth hardwood matched the timber beams that arched across the ceiling like the skeleton of a ship. A narrow corridor of doors, combined with the absence of windows, gave it an almost monastery-like appearance, and in direct contrast to the noises we had just heard, it was eerily quiet.

“Miss Peale?” Dominic said in a low voice. “Are you there?”

A whimper emerged from inside one of the rooms, and we took a step toward it. “Miss Peale?” he said again. “Do you have Cassie with you?”

Silence.

I stayed inches behind him as he moved toward the door, holding on to one of the belt loops on the back of his pants. My whole body was hot, as if it might explode, and the top of my scalp prickled. Dominic reached out and gripped the door’s black iron handle. “Miss Peale?” He pushed open the door.

It was hard to take everything in all at once, but my eyes
fell first on the nurse, a short, chubby woman, who was standing in the corner next to Cassie’s bed. At the sight of us, she flattened her hands out in front of her, as if to say, “Not yet.” Dressed in pale blue scrubs with a mass of black hair pulled back in a ponytail, she had two orange globs beneath her shirt, one loose and watery-looking, lodged inside her breastbone, the other small and tight as an acorn inside her armpit. Next to her on the floor, a lamp lay on its side, the shade dented and torn. Remnants of the smashed lightbulb littered the space next to it like tiny teeth.

“What happened?” Dominic asked. “Where’s Cassie?”

The nurse brought a finger to her lips and pointed to a spot directly behind us. Slowly, Dominic and I turned around.

Cassie was stooped over in the opposite corner, bent in half at the waist, clutching her right side with her free hand. Her clothes appeared clean enough—blue athletic shorts, a white T-shirt, soft socks—but her hair, which hung on either side of her face, looked as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Both arms were swathed in cocoons of white gauze, some of them still dotted with bright red spots of blood. Beneath them, I could make out tiny shapes in all different colors, miniature specks, darting one way and then another, from where she had cut herself again. Her breath went in and out of her mouth in shallow, ragged spurts, and her eyes were riveted to the floor.

“Cassie?” For the first time, Dominic sounded frightened. “Cassie, are you all right?”

A low growl drifted out from beneath her hair.

“Don’t startle her.” Miss Peale’s voice was very soft. “She’s just settled down again, I think. I’m going to give her a shot in a few seconds.”

“What happened?” He did not take his eyes off his sister.

“She just bolted,” Miss Peale whispered. “One minute she was sleeping, and then she sat up and started screaming. She tipped over the lamp when she jumped out of bed, and I think that really spooked her. She took off down the hall after that.”

A snarl came out from the corner, the sound a dog might make before it lunges at someone’s throat.

Dominic turned, gripping my hand. “Go to her?” he mouthed. “Let her know you’re here.”

I stared at him, unable to answer.

“Just let her see you,” he whispered. “Let her look at your face.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll go with you.”

“What are you doing?” the nurse said sharply. “You need to leave her alone now. She’s very skittish after these episodes. I have to—”

“I know,” Dominic said. “Please. Just give me a minute.”

Miss Peale did not reply.

I forced one foot to move. Then the other. Cassie’s hands had moved up toward her face; she was twisting small pieces of her hair, wrapping them around her fingers. Suddenly, she dropped to the floor in a heap. I stopped,
frightened. She stayed there for a moment, her face buried between her arms. The grunting noises began again, slowly at first and then gathering speed, a wolf panting. Inside her arms, the red shapes danced and throbbed, but there was no sign of the blackness in her head.

Not yet.

Not yet.

“Cassie?” The name coming out of my throat was barely audible, but the growling ceased, as if someone had pulled a switch in Cassie’s back. I took another step, watching as she lifted her head. “Cassie, it’s me. It’s Marin.”

Her face appeared like a mirage behind her hair and she gazed at me for a moment, transfixed. Under the bandage on her left cheek, I could make out the large carving wound again; it looked like a piece of raw meat, the edges clotted with dried blood and tissue. I opened my mouth, my lips forming a word, but nothing came out.

“Talk to her.” Dominic’s voice sounded tremulous in my ear. His fingers squeezed mine. “Say her name again.”

“Cassie, it’s Marin.” I tried to steady my voice. “I’m here again, like you asked. Do you remember?”

Without warning, the girl’s blue eyes rolled up inside her head. For a split second, her pupils vanished, a cloudy whiteness filling the void. Her eyelashes fluttered, tiny wings desperate to take flight, and then they rolled back down again, settling on me with an eerie deliberation. My blood seemed to freeze as I tried to understand what I was
seeing. These were not Cassie’s eyes looking out at me any longer. These eyes were reptilian, glossy and hooded, the pupils dark and cylindrical instead of round.

I took a step back, whimpering, pulling on Dominic’s hand.

“No, it’s okay.” Dominic was holding my hand so hard it hurt. “Just say her name one more time, Marin. Maybe it’ll help.”

I shook my head, pushing at him now, trying to twist my hand out of his grip. “No, I can’t. Please! Let me go!”

A terrible giggling drifted out from the corner, a throaty cackle that got louder, filling the air in the room with dread. The hairs on my neck stood up, and I could hear the sharp intake of Dominic’s gasp.

“That’s the laugh,” he whispered. “That’s the one I heard that night. In the kitchen.”

“We have to get her back in bed.” Miss Peale strode across the room, sounding both irritated and frightened. “Right now.”

Dominic dropped my hand as Miss Peale reached for his sister. He followed her lead, grabbing Cassie’s feet as she took the girl’s arms. The strange laughter dissolved into shrieks as they carried her across the room, Cassie’s body writhing and twisting under their hold. She arched her back and threw back her head, shoving her legs in and out like pistons, struggling to break loose. The awkward movements caused Dominic to drop her feet, and he moved in quickly, desperately, to grab them again. Somehow, the two
of them got her back into bed, pinning her down against the mattress and then holding her with their arms.

“Keep her down on your side!” Miss Peale barked. “I’ve gotta tie her arm down over here.”

It was hard to know if Cassie heard she was going to be tied down or if she had run out of energy and decided to relinquish the fight. But she suddenly stilled, a decision so immediate and unexpected that everyone, including Miss Peale, took a step back. Cassie lay there for a moment on the mattress, limp and unmoving. The restraint closest to Dominic still hung down on the side of the bed, forgotten.

“Cassie?” Miss Peale said her name as the girl sat up in the bed. She looked disoriented, confused. “Cassie, honey, what is it?” If she heard the nurse’s question, Cassie gave no indication of it. She began to breathe hard again, her nostrils flaring, as if something was building itself up inside. A murky gray thread appeared behind her eyes, snaking between the spaces inside her skull. I watched as it morphed into a rich blackness, the thickest, deepest absence of light I had ever seen, ten times blacker than her fingertips had been the night before, one hundred times deeper than what I had seen in the hospital. It filled every crevice inside her brain, swallowing the tiniest of cells, obliterating them one by one from sight. It was so deep that it was not even a color. Or a shape.

It was more of a thing, a presence.

“What’s going on?” Miss Peale’s voice was sharp again. “What’s that on her neck?”

The right side of Cassie’s neck had begun to swell, as if being pushed at with a fist from the inside. Slowly, a section of skin morphed into a small, round shape. Inch by inch, it grew, expanding to the size of a golf ball, and then a peach, before it seemed to stop, hovering just a few inches below her jawbone. The skin around it was as taut as a drum, the edges ringed with red. Cassie reached toward us with her one free arm, the fingers on her hands twisting like claws. She opened her mouth wide, as if she might scream, and then closed it again without a sound.

“What’s happening?” Dominic shouted. “Is she choking?”

“I’m getting the Risperdal.” Miss Peale raced over to the dresser on the other side of the room and grabbed a syringe. She watched Cassie with one eye as she held up the needle, flicking at the bottom half with a shaking fingernail.

The other side of Cassie’s neck began to twitch and then swell. “Mariiiiiinn …,” she whispered. Her voice sounded far away, as if trapped inside a box. “Mariiiiiinn …”

Miss Peale lunged at the girl, grabbing her wrist and plunging the needle deep into the muscle of her upper arm. Cassie did not turn her head, did not even blink.

“Mariiiiinn …” Her voice was a wheeze, the last fragment of air being pushed from her lungs.

“Oh my God.” Dominic’s voice was louder. “She can’t breathe! Help her, Marin. Please!”

I took a step forward, an inch closer, my eyes still on Cassie’s neck, which was distorted now beyond description, but she recoiled at the movement as if I had touched her
with an electrical current. The sinewy blackness seemed to be bleeding now, oozing its way behind the features of her face, swallowing the insides of her throat. It dipped lower, spreading like a wave into the tops of her shoulders, her lungs, her heart.

“Cassie?” My lips shook.

She gazed at me for half a second with her terrible eyes and then lifted her hand to point at me. “You can do nothing to me,” she said. The faraway whisper in her voice was gone, replaced now with a new, gravelly voice that sounded warped, as if she was speaking in slow motion. “Nothing!”

I felt faint, listening to the sound coming out of Cassie’s mouth, my fear a tangible thing now holding me by both shoulders. And yet just like in the hospital, I could not stop staring, could not tear my eyes away from the horrific image. My eyes did not blink. They could not. Riveted, I remained where I was, locked in a nightmare of unbearable proportions.

Cassie continued to stare at me, the blackness inside of her seething. Her eyes darted first to the right and then to the left. All at once, she dropped her head and clutched one side of it with her free hand. She rocked back and forth in the bed, pulling at her hair, and then stopped. Without lifting her head, she pointed at me again and began to scream. “Why do you keep looking at me? Stop it! You’ll kill me! You’ll
kill
me!”

I staggered backward, gasping for breath, the fear like
a claw making its way up the back of my throat, siphoning off breath. What was happening now? Nothing made sense anymore. Hadn’t Dominic said that she
wanted
to see me, that she derived some kind of comfort from my presence in the room? I wasn’t helping at all. In fact, it looked like I was only making things worse.

Cassie flung herself against the bed; sprawled out on her back, her arms and legs beginning to flail like pieces of a broken windmill. Miss Peale was on top of her again, her mouth pinched in a tight line, struggling to tie her down. Cassie screamed and cursed. “Get out! Stop looking at me! Get out of here before you kill me!”

I moved back. Way, way back, past Miss Peale and Cassie and Dominic, into the corner, where I slumped down, pressing myself into the tiny space. If I could have, I would have merged somehow through the wall. Anything to get out of here. Anything to forget the ghastly scene unfolding before my eyes.

“Get out!” she continued to scream, although there was a desperation to it now, a begging tone that had not been there before. “Please,” she moaned. “Please just leave me alone.”

It took a full five minutes for Cassie to settle down again. Even after the screaming stopped, her fingers and legs continued to twitch, as if ridding themselves of the last of her energy until she was still again, a tangle of limp limbs beneath Miss Peale. Like a tide ebbing, the blackness left her body, a swirl of movement down a drain. Her panting
slowed, and after another few seconds, her eyes refocused, the pupils shrinking back to their normal size.

“Is she …?” Dominic started.

“Give me a minute.” Miss Peale’s voice was tight. “Let her relax all the way. I don’t know if she’ll start up again.”

The room was silent for several moments, the only sound the deep intakes of Miss Peale’s and Cassie’s breathing.

“All right,” Miss Peale said. She cradled Cassie like a baby in both arms, repositioning her against the pillows. “I think this one’s over.”

Dominic ran to her. “Cassie,” he said.

With great effort, Cassie lifted her head off the pillow and looked around the room, her head hanging low against her chest. Her eyes drifted, unfocused, as if she were drunk, pausing only when she caught sight of me, still hovering in the corner.