The Ghost of Graylock (7 page)

T
HAT NIGHT
, N
EIL DREAMED OF THE HOSPITAL
.

He was in the back of a van. He couldn’t move. Glancing down at his body, he realized he was strapped to a wheelchair. When the vehicle abruptly stopped, someone opened the door, and someone else guided the chair down a wooden ramp to a paved road in the middle of a dense wood. He tried to turn his head, to look around, but his spine was locked down too, tied tightly to a high metallic spindle. Forced to face forward, he saw the road led straight toward a familiar island.

The chain-link fence was gone. The concrete bridge was in perfect shape. Crossing the water, he noticed that the surface was clear of green scum. The healthy reeds grew with an almost cultivated appearance trim, straight, clean.

Ahead, Graylock Hall waited with a blank expression. If places were capable of thought, this building cared about nothing. It knew it would have him eventually. The boy in the chair was simply another meal, one more soul to sit in a waiting room that would never be full.

He was inside. Tiled walls rushed by. Fast, then faster, until the journey was indistinguishable from a roller-coaster ride. Space Mountain.
Star Wars
. Light speed. Neil wanted to scream, but he realized that his mouth had been clamped shut; leather straps wrapped his skull from crown to jaw.

The chair finally came to a stop in front of a closed door. Green paint flecked off its metal surface. From inside the room, he could hear someone crying. Weeping. Emitting great, gasping sighs. He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see who was in there. But even through his eyelids, he watched the door swing slowly open. Someone pushed the chair into the room, then slammed the door closed with a
whoom!

Through a high window, clouded daylight fell, illuminating the center of the small room but leaving its corners in shadow. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor were all dingy, puffy, and padded, once white. Flicking his eyes back and forth, Neil noticed long scrapes in the old pads where patients had clawed at the walls, trying to escape. Dark brown streaks painted the edges of the gouged fabric. He imagined broken fingernails, dried blood that no one had ever bothered to clean up. Then, from a shadowed corner, something moved. A voice cried out. No words. A sigh of frustration. A sob of misery. Hopelessness.

The light shifted. Someone was sitting there in the darkness, as if in her own mess, huddled, head down. Dressed in white. A coat with abnormally long sleeves pinned the person’s arms to her torso. Stringy, long hair covered her face, draped almost to the floor. Her shoulders shuddered.

Neil grunted, and the person froze, as if suddenly aware of his presence. The figure raised her head, peering at him from behind the wild tangle of hair. She gasped, leaned back against the padded wall, struggled to stand. Then she stumbled forward, barefoot, step step step step, all the way to his wheelchair, threatening to fall face-first into Neil’s chest. He pressed himself into his seat, unable to move, unable to cry out.

The person froze, examined him closely, sniffing at his face, his restraints. With the figure directly before him, Neil expected to smell rot, filth, stale breath. Instead, he experienced a recognizable aroma, not unpleasant: roses.

His mother’s perfume.

A lightning bolt of nausea melted his muscles.

The woman shook her hair from her face. Though the eyes that peered at him were puffy and red from weeping, they were instantly recognizable, even this desperate and wildly ecstatic.

“Honey,” whispered his mother. “Neil, baby. You’ve got to get us out of here.”

But how?
he thought.

As if to answer him, she opened her mouth. A purple tongue lolled out, dripping noxious black liquid. This was no longer his mother’s face.

She leaned in, as if to kiss him, but at the last second, her cracked lips parted, showing him black gums and several clusters of long, sharp teeth. The brightest white in the darkness.

Neil awoke with a start, and when he did not recognize the room, he cried out quietly.

A moment later, his brain clicked everything into place again. He was at his aunts’ house. He’d had a nightmare. A bad one. He let it slip away, but several pieces stuck. The padded room. The figure in the corner. His mother’s plea. The horrible face. He took a deep breath, wishing for the glass of water he always remembered to keep next to his bed back home.

He froze, suddenly aware that he wasn’t alone.

Someone was crying. Here in his room. The faint sound seemed to have followed him out from the dream. But he wasn’t dreaming. In the darkness, he could make out a slumped figure sitting at the end of the bed. She wore a white nightgown. Long brown hair trailed down her back. Her hands were at her face, muffling her soft sobs.

“Bree,” Neil said. “What’s the matter?”

She flinched at the sound of his voice, then turned to look at him. Her face was in shadow, but he felt her piercing stare, as if she couldn’t believe he could actually see her here in the darkness.

“Did you have a bad dream too?” He leaned forward to touch her shoulder, but she stood. Watching him, she backed toward the bedroom door, where she paused before slipping away. She was gone before Neil even had a chance to think of turning on the bedside lamp.

He threw back his sheets and slowly edged toward the door. Near the end of the bed, his bare feet slid on a slick patch of floor. The wood there was wet. “What the …?” He imagined a pool of tears. Had his sister been crying so hard for so long? Was that even possible? Neil bent down. His fingers tingled as the cold moisture clung to his skin. Definitely water. Clutching the mattress to pull himself back up, he realized that his bed was also damp. Had Bree just taken a bath or something? It felt like the middle of the night, but he couldn’t say for sure — the clock at his bedside had apparently run out of batteries.

Neil found his way to the hall. He knocked on his sister’s door. There was no answer. He turned the knob, pressing his mouth to the crack. “Bree,” he whispered. From inside came a soft groan. Neil pushed the door open and stepped in.

Bree was sprawled across the mattress, her sheets and limbs tangled together. She lifted her head from the pillow. “Neil?” she said, her voice foggy with sleep. “What are you doing?”

Neil felt a chill. His shin suddenly pinched at him. “I just came to see if you were okay.”

“I’m fine. I was sleeping.”

“Sleep
walking
you mean?”

Bree propped herself up on her elbows to see him more clearly. She reached over and turned on her lamp. The room filled with a cozy glow. “Sleepwalking? I don’t think so.”

Neil flinched. “You were sitting on the edge of my bed. You were crying so hard the floor was wet.”

“You were dreaming,” said Bree, sounding annoyed.

“I swear I wasn’t,” he answered. “I’d bet my …”

Then he noticed something odd. Bree was wearing a purple T-shirt and gym shorts. Definitely not the white nightgown she’d had on in his bedroom. That chill enveloped him again. He wiped new dampness from his clammy palms onto his pajama pants.

“You’d bet your what?” said Bree.

He was going to say
life
, and was glad he’d stopped himself. It was a bet he would have lost. Moving toward Bree’s bed, he pointed to a dark spot on her sheets. “What’s this?”

Bree sat up. She touched the stain. “Ew. It’s damp.”

“I found the same thing in my room,” Neil said.

Bree bit her lip. “You swear you’re not screwing with me?”

“No way,” said Neil. “She was here.”

“
Who
was here?”

Neil had a pretty good idea. But he couldn’t bring himself to say her name out loud, as if that would draw her back again. Instead, he explained exactly what had happened to him when he’d woken from his nightmare.

Bree hopped out of bed and stood next to Neil, as if this new closeness would protect them from their fear. “What do we do?” Bree asked.

“Tell the aunts?”

“And freak them out too?”

“Maybe it was one of them?”

“Claire or Anna snuck into both of our rooms and sat on our beds, soaking wet, crying her eyes out.” Bree shook her head. “You really believe that?”

“No … but what’s the other option?” Neil could think of several, none of which provided him with any comfort. Bree must have felt the same way, because she did not answer.

N
EIL HAD HEARD STORIES ABOUT PEOPLE
who suffered from insomnia, the inability to fall asleep despite a feeling of extreme exhaustion. The morning after the nightmare, he knew exactly how those people felt: horrible. Sitting at the kitchen table, his eyes burned. His scalp hurt, as if every follicle in his head was angry with him. It was cruel, but knowing that Bree was experiencing the same thing made Neil feel a bit better. She sat across from him, leaning on the table, propping her head on her crossed arms.

The night before, she’d come back to his room with him. They’d kept the light on, lying restlessly on his bed until early morning light spilled through the windows. The aunts found the two of them a couple hours later sprawled half-conscious on the couch downstairs, the television blaring an obnoxious aerobics program.

The incident with the visitor accounted for only part of Neil’s sleep-depriving anxiety; mostly, he was afraid that if he allowed himself to fall fully asleep, he’d return to that padded cell in the dream asylum, where the purple-tongued demoness was waiting to finish her meal.

“So the beds are uncomfortable,” Anna said, placing the carton of orange juice in the center of the table.

“No, no.” Bree shook her head. “They’re
really
comfortable.”

Claire and Anna glanced at each other. “Then why were you two down here?” Anna asked. The silence that followed was as sharp as a knife.

Why couldn’t he just spit it out? Finally, Neil decided he
could
. After all, maybe the aunts had answers. “Actually,” he said, “someone came into our rooms last night. It sort of freaked us out.”

Again, a glance between the aunts; this one, however, was of confusion. And it revealed the answer to a question he hadn’t even asked.
It wasn’t either of us
, it said.

“Someone?” said Claire.

“She had long brown hair,” said Neil. “Dressed in what I thought was a white nightgown. But it might have been something else. A uniform maybe.”

“And you both saw her?” Anna asked.

Bree lifted her head. “Well … no. But there was a puddle on my floor.”

Anna scowled. “Neil. Please. Your sister doesn’t need you playing jokes on her like this.”

Neil’s face flushed. “It’s not like that.” He glanced at Bree for help, but she was looking at him as if considering that Anna might be onto something. “We think the woman might have been … well, a ghost.”

Now Anna glared at Claire. “All that talk about Graylock yesterday,” she murmured.

Claire sat down at the table. She reached out and took both of their hands. “You guys,” she said, “I want you to
talk
to us if you’re feeling upset or … strange about everything that’s been going on back home. Anna and I understand this is a really difficult time for you. For your mom. And your dad.”

Neil grunted. No one seemed to notice. He chewed on the inside of his lip, annoyed. He’d worked up the courage to tell them what was really happening. Why did Claire have to change the subject?

“Thanks,” said Bree. “We know it’s hard for you too. Having us here.”

“But what about the possibility of a ghost?” Neil interrupted. Slowly, everyone turned to look at him. “You told us about what you saw at Graylock Lake, Aunt Claire. The woman in the reeds. What if that was Nurse Janet? What if she followed … I mean, maybe the person we saw last night was her too?”

“Nurse Janet?” said Claire unsurely.

Anna snorted and shook her head. “She’s a boogeywoman. A ghost story someone made up to keep kids in line.”

“I heard she worked at that hospital,” Neil persisted. “They say she still haunts it. That she drowns kids who break into Graylock Hall. She kills them just like she killed her patients when she was still alive.”

“
Neil!
” Bree said through her teeth.

“If that’s true,” said Anna, squinting at him, “whatever was she doing
here
last night? According to you, Neil, she comes after kids who break into Graylock, right?”

Claire stood up. “Okay. All right. Enough ghost talk. We don’t want anyone having bad dreams again tonight.”

“It wasn’t a bad dream,” said Neil, right before remembering the extremely bad dream that had woken him up in the first place.

“I don’t care if it was acid indigestion,” said Anna. “The Nurse Janet story is a lie that was started by parents who had good, if not slightly warped, intentions: to keep the doors of that creepy building locked tight. No one should be going in there. Not anymore.”

Neil pressed his lips together.
You’ve got to get us out of here
, his mother had insisted in the dream from the night before. If learning the truth about Nurse Janet could prove that she had come to him, that he hadn’t
imagined
it — that he wasn’t taking after his mom — then he didn’t care what building he had to sneak into.

No one would stop him.