Authors: Laura Bradley Rede
“It’s too late.” Jesse pulls herself back to her feet. “You’ve been out all day. It’s already getting late. We have to go now, before the nurse gets here.”
I shake my head desperately. “The door locks electronically. There’s an alarm. You can get out, but I can’t.”
“Not a problem.” The monster plunges its arm into the wall beside the door. It passes right through the plaster. There’s a sizzling sound and the lighted monitor beside the door winks out. The monster gestures to the door, smiling at me. “After you.”
“No,” Jesse says, “I’ll check for the nurse first.” She disappears through the door, then reappears moments later. “She’s still in the room next door. There are three more nurses at the station by the entrance, though.”
The monster’s smile widens. “I will handle them.”
I don’t know what that means—and I’m not sure I want to know. Besides, there’s no time to ask. Cautiously, I turn the knob, easing the door open just a crack, my whole body tensed, expecting the alarm to sound.
It doesn’t. I let out my breath and slip silently into the hall.
The ward is quiet. Light leaks out from under the door next to mine, and I can hear the muffled voices of the nurse and the patient inside.
“Go!” Jesse whispers.
“I will distract them,” the monster says. “Just get around the corner and wait until they’re gone.”
“But what are you going to—”
“Go!”
We go, the monster flowing down the hall like dark lava, Jesse and I following behind. She stays ahead of me, walking silently in the center of the hall to keep a lookout, while I follow behind, pressed against the wall. I can see the three nurses at the station near the entrance, but they are all facing away, huddled around one of the computer screens, discussing something in hushed voices. I manage to make it around the corner—
And walk directly into a mop and bucket someone left sitting there.
It clatters to the ground.
The conversation at the nurses’ station goes quiet.
“What was that?” one of them says, and I hear her chair scrape back as she stands to come investigate.
Another laughs. “Now you’re going to be spooked all night. You’ll go back to saying the ward is haunted.”
“I swear to God it’s haunted! Were you here that night when—”
“I’ll check it out,” the first nurse says. I hold my breath, looking desperately around for somewhere to hide as her footsteps get closer.
Then there’s another crash from somewhere in the other direction—a loud one. The monster must have knocked over something huge. The nurse’s steps reverse, shifting from walking to running as she dashes past the end of our hall and heads in the direction of the sound, the other two nurses close behind.
The monster comes back to us, so quickly that I imagine the nurses must have run right through it going the opposite way. The thought makes me feel ill, but there’s no time to dwell on it. The nurses’ station is temporarily unstaffed, and we need to get out now.
“Get the door alarm,” Jesse says. The monster is already rummaging around the nurses’ station, searching for the controls.
“Faster!” I hiss. “They’ll come back!”
The monster gives up on finding the alarm and starts shorting things out at random, sinking its long black tentacles into the computer monitors until the sparks fly and the screens wink out like extinguished candles. It disappears under the desk and I hear a sizzling noise, then a whirring sound overhead. I look up and get a face full of cold water as the emergency sprinkler system clicks on.
Chaos. All over the ward, patients are screaming, nurses and doctors yelling. Whatever the monster touched must have tripped off the sprinkler in all the rooms.
But did it shut off the alarm? Does it even matter now? Footsteps are running this way. I take a deep breath, push open the door, and rush out into the cold evening air. The sleet stopped long ago, but the ground is still slick with ice and my feet are bare, my thin hospital scrubs soaked through with cold water.
Jesse frowns down at my feet. “I’d carry you if I could.”
I’m not sure she even could—Jesse’s not that big—but it’s a nice thought. I smile at her. “Just run. I’m okay.”
Truthfully, I’m not. Running hurts like hell. My poor feet are already half frozen from my time on the clock, and every step on the icy ground sends pain shooting through them, but I can’t stop. I half run, half slip down the icy embankment, headed for the parking lot. “Where to?”
“We need a car,” Jesse says.
And fast. How long before they notice I’m gone? I’m sure, even in the chaos, it will only be a matter of minutes. We slide to a stop and crouch behind the nearest car.
“Someone else is in the lot,” the monster says.
I peer out from behind the car and see Dr. Sterling, just hitting the locks on his dark sedan. He looks more disheveled than usual, and I feel a pang of guilt knowing that he has come to check on me. His brow knits in a look of concern as he gazes up at Westgate, which has now become a hive of activity as the doctors and nurses struggle to evacuate the soaked patients. I watch him break into a trot, rushing past our hiding spot and up the hill.
The second he’s over the embankment we make a dash for his car, me keeping low so as not to be seen. Jesse throws herself through the passenger side door while the monster thrusts one thick tentacle through the driver’s side window to pop the lock. I realize with a start that I’m going to have to drive. It has been a while, but what else can we do? I tug the door open and scramble inside, slouching down in the seat to keep out of view. “How do I start it? There’s no key!”
In answer, the monster lays his massive tentacle on the hood of the car, like a defibrillator on a patient’s chest. There’s a crackle of electricity and I snatch my hands off the steering wheel as a jolt goes through me. The car roars roughly to life, hazard lights flashing, windshield wipers flailing.
Jesse gives a whoop of victory that makes me glad no one else can hear her. “Hot damn! Let’s go!”
I scramble to shut everything off and throw it into reverse, my bare foot pumping the gas. The car lurches drunkenly as the monster clamors onto the roof and I swing out of the parking space, wheels whirring on the icy pavement.
But we don’t get far. The wrought iron gate by the guard house is closed, and there’s no driving through it. We have no choice but to stop.
“ID please,” the guard’s voice comes over the microphone. Then he catches sight of my face and I see his eyes go wide. I can only imagine how I look: hair wild, hospital scrubs soaked, eyes burning with panic. I look like—well, an escaped lunatic, which is basically what I am.
The guard’s hand darts for his emergency alarm, but the monster is faster. One smoky tendril plunges through the control board, sending up a sudden spray of sparks that makes the guard jump back. “What the hell?”
The guardhouse lights flicker.
“Halt right there!” the guard yells, but his voice wavers. He’s freaked.
I try to keep my own voice calm. “Just let us out the gate.”
The guard peers into the car and I realize I’ve said “us” when I’m the only one he can see. His hand reaches for something out of sight. Does he have a gun? “Miss,” he says, “step out of the car.”
“He’s going to kill her,” the monster growls above me. “Make her send me into the light before she goes.”
“No one is getting killed!” I yell, making the guard jump. “And no one is getting sent into the light until I say they are. Now, please, open the gate!”
Jesse leans through her window and hits a button on the guard’s control panel. The gate swings open. I punch the gas and the car bucks forward like a racehorse jumping from the chute.
“Hey!” The guard yells behind us, “stop!”
A shot rings out.
“He is trying to kill her!” the monster bellows.
“He’s aiming for the tires,” Jesse says, but I can’t see how that’s much better. If he shoots out a tire, we’re screwed.
I’m seriously freaking out. “It’s—” I look at the clock on the dashboard “—8:47. We only have like three hours!”
Jesse nods grimly. “You better step on it.”
“I can’t! If I do, I’ll get pulled over. Any minute now, there will be an APB out for an eighteen year old Latina girl in hospital scrubs. There’s no way they’re going to miss me.” I’m hyperventilating. “I’ve never even gotten a ticket! I can’t do this!”
Jesse looks at me “If you don’t,” she says, “we’ll never reach Delia in time.”
She’s right, of course. I’m going to have to risk it. My bare foot presses on the slushy gas pedal, and we fly down the darkened road in silence.
I glance at Jesse. She’s twisted around in the passenger seat, keeping a lookout behind us.
“Put on your seatbelt!” I snap.
She gives me a confused look. “I’m dead.”
“Put it on anyhow!” I yell. Then I realize how ridiculous that sounds and, in spite of myself, I start to laugh.
Jesse giggles, too, and in seconds we’re both laughing insanely. We laugh all the way to the highway, then drive for a long while in silence after the laughter fades.
“You sure you know how to get there?” Jesse asks after a while, and I’m about to tell her I think I do when the monster drops through the roof of the car and lands in the back seat, filling it completely. I jump about a mile—because, weirdly enough, I had actually forgotten it was up there. The car gives an odd little hiccough and shudder and starts to slow down. I pump the gas, but it does nothing. The engine is whirring strangely, like it does when you hook up the cables to jump-start another car, like something is dragging on the power.
“What’s going on?” Jesse’s image flickers nervously. “What’s wrong with the car?”
The monster’s black eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “No one is going any further until you send me into the light.”
“I will,” I say. “I promise. But first—”
“But nothing! You will do it now!” He roars so loudly the windows rattle and the air is suddenly rank with his sick-sweet breath. The car is starting to limp. The headlights dim and die. If a police car spots us now, we’ll stand out like a wounded deer. I have no choice but to pull over, crawling into the parking lot beside a darkened warehouse.
And it’s a good thing I do, too. We’ve just slowed to a stop when two cop cars race by us going in the opposite direction, lights flashing and sirens wailing. For a second, the red lights reflect off the monster’s yellow eyes. Then the sirens fade as the cops disappear out of sight and our car is plunged into darkness again.
“Send me into the light.”
It’s not the growl in the monster’s voice that makes me want to do it. It’s the look in its eyes, the deep, painful longing.
Jesse starts to protest. “There isn’t time! We have to get back before—”
“No,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
Jesse stares at me, shocked. “But Saintly...”
“We have to, Jess. We said we would. It helped us escape. That was the deal.”
The monster is strangely quiet, watching me with guarded hope. “No tricks now.”
“No tricks,” I say. “But you should know, I’ve never done this before.”
The monster looks at Jesse sharply. “But you said—”
“I said she
could
do it,” Jesse says simply, “and she can.” Her confidence reassures me.
Evidently it calms the monster, too, because it nods its massive head. “Do it, then.”
“Get out of the car.” I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I know we need some space and I want to get farther out of sight. “Here, behind the building.”
We climb out of the car. I feel so conspicuous, standing beside the hulking monster, I have to reassuring myself that anyone driving by would just see me: a small, barefoot girl in pale blue scrubs.
And soon they wouldn’t even see that. We step behind the building and disappear into the deep shadows of the loading dock. Jesse gestures me over to a sheltered space between the bright red dumpster and a stack of wooden pallets. It smells like rotting vegetables and urine—hardly the place you would imagine as a gateway to the light—but it’s all we’ve got.
Jesse raises her eyebrows questioningly at me, and I know what she’s thinking. The clock is ticking. But there’s no way this can be rushed. I take a deep breath. “I have to warn you—”
“I know,” the monster snaps. “You’ve never really done this. You said that already.”
It—
he
- is scared, I realize. I can hear it in his voice. The thought is a revelation to me. How can something that scares me so much be afraid?
I make my voice gentle. “No, I mean I have to warn you that I don’t know…I don’t know any more than anyone else…”
“Where we go,” Jesse finishes.
“You mean you think I’m going to Hell.” His voice is matter-of-fact. “You think I’m going to Hell because I ate other spirits.”
Jesse and I exchange a nervous glance, unsure of what to say. But the monster isn’t angry. He nods his head thoughtfully. “That’s probably true, but I don’t even care. I just want to be done. I’m just ready for it to be over.”
I nod understandingly. “Who knows if there even is a Hell.” Dev said there was—he believed he would go there, but since when is Dev the font of all truth? “And you helped us,” I add. “That has to count for something.”
The monster looks down at me and I can see gratitude in its big, wet eyes. “Do it.” His voice is quiet and hoarse. “Quickly.”
I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. With all the confidence I can muster, I say, “
Lux vos liberabit.
The light will set you free.”
Jesse
Instantly, there is a sizzling noise. I open my eyes in time to see a section of the sky above us unzip. It starts small but stretches outward until it is the size of a large doorway, and through it I can see the light, as if a second, sunlit sky had been above this one all along, just separated from us by a thin film of darkness. It shines through the opening in wide golden shafts. There’s a wind, too—not the cold, late-December wind it should be, but a strong, hot wind that smells sweet, like freshly mowed hay. It whips Saintly’s long, black hair around her upturned face. “It’s beautiful,” she breathes.