Midnight Ruling (4 page)

The profanities of the screaming patient outside of the room began to change into obscure yelling.

Reaching forward, I poked my aunt’s still shoulder, and she bobbed but didn’t otherwise recognize my presence. I hadn’t anticipated leaving without knowing the way into the Demon’s Grave. The idea that she was shutting me out multiplied the butterflies.

“MUD…AVE…” The screaming persisted outside.

I could hear scuffling outside and men trying to shout over the crazed individual.

“Nell!” I shouted. “I’ll bring Adam back in here. You haven’t faced a Challenge after all…”

With a deft swing, Nell slapped my cheek. I barely had time to react.

Stumbling out of her reach, I cupped a hand over the stinging skin. She had remarkable reflexes. “You…” My volcanic anger was abruptly snuffed when her eyes lit back up.

“Listen…” Nell whispered in reverie. “The Erebus speaks.”

“BLOOOOOOOOODDDD!” The frantic shouts from outside the door finally caught my full attention.

Nell nodded curtly. “That’s all you need. He’s got a wild power to him, that one.” She locked her eyes on the door before she said to me, “The book has the rest, but you must tell him about me.”

“What?” I snapped. “That didn’t tell me a damn thing! Blood for what? Who has a wild power? Ai—the Keeper?”

Nell’s teeth gnashed, causing me to take an extra step back. “If you weren’t listening, that isn’t my fault, silly girl. The Erebus wants you.” The last sentence sounded bitter and harsh. “He always wanted you.”

I opened my mouth to argue when the door opened and Susan stepped in with a small tray of colorful pills in plastic cups. She smiled at the two of us, uncertainty lingering in her gaze as she paused in the doorway. Her foot propped the metal door open, inviting me to leave.

“Just a few more minutes?” I implored Susan, but she was already shaking her head.

“I warned you. You’ll have to come back another day. Perhaps around three in the afternoon?”

I couldn’t leave it at this. We weren’t playing games, and the last thing I wanted to do was come back here. Casting a heated glare at Nell, I stalked to the door. “Can I come back in a few hours maybe?” My eyes never left the hateful, grinning thing under the covers.

Susan shook her head apologetically, though her smile was anything but sorry. “It’ll be past visiting hours then. I suggest Wednesdays. That would be best.”

“I can’t…”

“If you don’t leave,” Susan prompted, “I’ll have Security remove you. Please don’t make me call them.”

Aidan poked his head in, causing Nell to stiffen in the bed. “Come on, Nora. We’ll come back.”

“But…”

“Nora?” Nell’s mouth formed a thin, tight smile. “I hadn’t recognized you with that hair. How’s Neive?”

The anger that gripped my already nerve-tensed body burst. I bolted forward and launched myself onto the bed, causing Susan to shriek. I pressed my knee into Nell’s bony hip, and my hands clawed for her throat. I wanted to squeeze it so tight that her smug smile turned into a choke. I wanted to see her hurt so badly that my head felt clouded.

We should take her to the Demon’s Grave with us. We could smuggle her out and make her trust us until we flung her into that hellhole. So the bitch could feel real fear.

My hands wrapped around the thinning throat, and Nell started to laugh. Her rotten breath seized my lungs until that laugh turned to a gag. That sound sent a thrill up my arms, and I squeezed harder.

Aidan rushed up behind me, wrapping one arm around my waist. He pulled, lifting both Nell and me off the bed before nearly collapsing on top of us when my grip didn’t break.

I heard someone shout about Security.

Nell flinched but didn’t move to stop me. Her eyes had snapped over to Aidan instead, fear glistening just behind the surface.

“We can’t have the police, Nora,” Aidan said behind me.

In that instant, I hated him. Releasing my grip on the old hag, I let Aidan pick me up and propel us into the hallway.

Susan had dropped her tray of pills, and a curious crowd had gathered. They moved in time to allow Aidan and me passage.

I heard Nell shriek, “Take me with you!”

Squirming, my face red and legs kicking for purchase, I shouted to be set down.

Aidan didn’t listen until the door closed to Nell’s room.

It was impossible to crush her scrawny throat now. My palms burned for her windpipe, but Aidan was right. It wouldn’t suit my situation to act crazy in a mental hospital.

Behind us, I heard the screaming man and turned to see two guards struggling to shove him into his room only a few doors down from Nell’s.

A heightened excitement rippled through the corridor. Some began to jabber incoherently. One man turned and tried to pee on the man next to him, and if it weren’t for a ready attendant, he would have. The white-clad men and women were becoming outnumbered by the mob.

“I think we need to get out of here,” Aidan said. He set me down but didn’t release my forearm.

The screaming man burst from his room as we approached the familiar exit. His wild, dark eyes fixed themselves on Aidan and me. He hollered in a voice so high-pitched that I had to confirm that there were indeed whiskers on his cheeks.

“Get everything—” His eyes pleaded with us. A pair of orderlies shoved him back into his room before he could finish the sentence. The door clicked shut behind him and his two combatants.

The Erebus speaks,
Nell had said. Was that Damien somehow puncturing our world?

Aidan and I stared at the closed doorway with the other on-lookers and hesitated, mulling over what just happened.

“Come on, before Security gets here,” Aidan said in a hushed voice.

I didn’t need to be told twice. I followed Aidan to our first locked door, where a security guard in white garb escorted us the rest of the way out of the hospital. He gave us plenty of stern glances meant to intimidate us, and I found myself glaring back. My adrenaline spiked, and my anger focused instead on that woman…oh, that evil
woman
.

Gritting my teeth, I stared straight ahead and focused on steadying my breathing.

Stepping out into the parking lot, I growled, “This was a waste of time. I don’t know what I expected…”

The doors behind us closed, and the high-and-mighty security guy stared at us, arms crossed in a gruff manner. Frustration gripped my chest as I walked through the parking lot towards Aidan’s car. Aidan didn’t miss a beat, keeping time with me.

Throwing up my arms, I began a rant. “I don’t want to go back there, but she didn’t give me anything. Another week just seems…”

In a calculated tone, Aidan said, “We got it.”

Staggering in my long strides, I glanced at him, feeling the heated adrenaline flicker for a moment. “We what?”

“I’m not thinking what happened in there was all a coincidence. We are supposed to get something.”

“Well, yes…”

Aidan’s pace slowed as his eyes swept the parking lot, but it was just us. “The second she escorted me from the room, that guy you saw in the hallway was walking by. He was twitching like he was having a seizure or something. Then he started screaming and looking at me.” Aidan paused, breathing in deeply. “I think Damien wants us to find a way back in. He’s helping us.”

“Nell said the Erebus speaks.” I paused in mid-step. “I think she meant Damien. But why not just throw a marble door up in my closet instead of having us run around like this?”

Aidan shrugged helplessly. “He talked a lot about rules last time we were there. That could be part of it. Or maybe he’s just being an ass and enjoys watching us run around.”

He was right on that. There was a lot of about Damien and the Grave that we didn’t know. If Damien were manipulating our every move, what would stop him from letting us make all the wrong ones? Though I somehow doubted that. Even Nell said it was supposed to be me.

Damien wanted me back. The thought frightened me, but at the same time, I felt a yearning, something far away.

Aidan thankfully interrupted that thought. “That crazy man in the hallway said everything that we’d need.” His eyes snapped towards me.

Excitement rippled down my spine. “You were listening!”

He nodded as we approached the car. Rummaging in his pocket, he pulled out the tape recorder. “Got it.”

He leaned his head closer to mine, nearly knocking our heads together, and rewound the old-fashioned tape and hit
Play
. At first, there was crackling and a fit of mumbling before the shouting pitch made me jump.

“
Mud from a bodiless grave
,” was the first high-pitched shout. The sound of fumbling and grunts as people tried to restrain the man muffled some of the second part. “
The haaaaair! And bloooooooooooodddd
!”

Aidan clicked the recorder off. “I’m assuming he means our own blood and hair. He wasn’t very specific, but if memory serves, many superstitions dictate that a person’s blood was a part of their soul. And their hair was a significant item when it came to curses, spells, luck, and so forth.”

I paused just outside of Aidan’s station wagon. “By bodiless grave, it must mean Neive’s.”

Licking his lips nervously, Aidan nodded, his eyes finally finding my own. “This is big, Nora. Are you sure you want to try this? If somehow this is a trick, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t even know what kind of ceremony we need to perform.”

I slipped inside the car, my excitement ebbing to a dull throb. He was right. We could find the ingredients, but then what? My eyes strayed up to the eerily cheerful asylum. “She said I had to find a book.”

“A book?”

“Yes, I was supposed to listen to the screaming man, and then she said that I had to get the book.”

Aidan opened my door, and we shared one last uncertain glance.

“I’m willing to do this, Aidan,” I whispered. “If you want to back out…”

He grumbled a reply and shook his head. “If I wanted to back out, I would have by now.”

It sounded reassuring out loud, but I wondered if we’d just signed our own death warrants.

Mom insisted on driving me to my first day back to college. I was no longer capable of doing anything myself, but this argument didn’t need to be rehashed.

Dad had left for work before my alarm went off, which upset my seven-year-old sister, Mona. She then gave Mom grief about the wrong cereal. Her yelling made our toddler sister, Caitlin, start screaming, which put everyone on edge. That girl managed to hit a pitch that I think only dogs could hear.

It was during the chaos that I found the package on the kitchen counter.

The brown paper box had a printed sticker on the front that read:

Nora J. Fuller

789 Ashgrove St.

Both the town and postal code were missing. Also, no stamps were evident to let me know where it came from. I picked it up. It was heavier than I anticipated. I shook it gently, bringing it close to my ear, but I couldn’t hear anything over Caitlin’s screaming.

I looked toward the living room and saw Mom picking Caitlin up and Mona grabbing her schoolbooks. I realized that, for once this week, no one was paying attention to me.

Unraveling the brown paper that was wrapped around the package, I exposed an ordinary, non-threatening cardboard box sealed with ordinary, everyday scotch tape.

For Nora.

It was in a unique handwriting that I didn’t recognize.

Paranoia gripped me like a vice, and I scurried out of the kitchen, hugging the package to my stomach. Ducking into the dark hallway, I dared a glance around the corner to ensure the group was still occupied. Satisfied, I hid in the narrow back hallway and shook the package again. I couldn’t feel anything moving within.

“Is this from you?” I asked out loud, staring at the unfamiliar penmanship.

Using my house key as a knife, I slit the tape and unfolded the box. I almost spilled curled wood chips all over the floor.

“Mooooooooommmm!” Mona yelled, making me jump.

I froze, waiting for someone to come flying around the corner. When they didn’t, I set the box on the ground and brushed aside the wood chips, careful of whatever hid beneath. This could be from Damien, after all.

In the kitchen, I heard Mom yelling for Mona to get her backpack.

Unable to chance caution, I stuffed my hands inside and pulled a golden gift free.

It was two inches thick and not much taller than my whole hand. There was a handle at the top, and the bottom resembled a Christian cross. I’d seen the symbol before on jewelry, but I didn’t know what it meant.

“Nora, where are you?”

Fumbling, I dropped the strange artifact back in the sawdust. Opening the basement door beside me, I shoved the box onto the top step and closed the door just as Mom barreled around the corner.

“Come on, come on!” she said breathlessly. “We’ll be late. Is that wood?” She plucked a wood chip from my hair.

I couldn’t think up a lie on the spot, and it made me feel light-headed. “Uhhhh…”

“Never mind,” she said. “We’re late.”

***

We dropped Mona off at the elementary school and Caitlin at a day-care, and then I was hauled halfway across the city. This was Mom’s unhealthy way of making sure I made it to college.

There had been moments last week where I was sure my parents weren’t going to let me leave the house at all. For yesterday’s trip, I claimed to be studying with a classmate all afternoon.

When she stopped in front of the college’s main building, I reached over and grabbed my mom’s hand so she’d look at me. Her expression screwed tight when she finally tore her gaze away from the building.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the end of your photography class later today.” My mom’s Wednesdays were always busy. I waved my cell phone for her to see. “And I’ll be in exams all day, so don’t freak out if I don’t answer or call back in an hour.”

After careful contemplation, she nodded and squeezed my fingers. A nervous smile signaled that it was all right to leave. “Bye, sweetie,” she called as I closed the door. I waved at her, putting on my most reassuring smile.