The Children's Ward (25 page)

One Hundred Five

“She’s coming,” Abigail said, looking inward. Joshua Fuller did not answer.

The nurse’s station was deserted and Quinn hesitated for a moment, catching her breath and trying to steady her nerves.

Her eyes were drawn to the closed-circuit monitor.

Joshua was in the ward, standing beside the window, looking out.

He seemed unnaturally still.

Quinn pushed through the double doors.

“Joshua,” she said.

“He can’t hear you,” Abigail said.

Quinn looked from Joshua to Abigail.

“What are you doing, Abigail?” Her voice sounded calmer than she felt.

“Whatever I want,” Abigail answered.

Quinn looked at the two empty beds. “Where is Tessi?”

“Gone. Her father came and took her away.”

“Her father…”

“Tessi’s mother had an accident last night.” Abigail’s tone was neutral, her expression disinterested. “She’s dead.”

“Dead.” Alicia Vincent, David White, Lloyd Marshall, and Anne Rossi. And Ian?

“Where’s Dr. Campbell?” she asked.

“He’s gone, too.”

“Did you kill him?” Quinn found it hard to say the words.

“No…but he’s not going to do any more harm.”

“What harm? He’s a doctor, he helps people.”

“No he doesn’t. He tries to make people remember things they want to forget. Always digging at places that hurt.” She smiled lazily. “He won’t be doing
that
anymore.”

“What have you done to him?”

“I emptied his brain.”

Quinn did not react.

“He liked you,” Abigail told her, matter-of-factly. “So does Dr. Fuller.”

“What have you done to Dr. Fuller?”

Abigail looked at Joshua standing by the window and frowned. “I haven’t done anything yet…I’m still deciding.”

Quinn wondered if Russell was listening, behind the drawn curtain.

“All right, Abigail,” she said. “This is between us, then. Let me get Russell out of here.” She started toward the boy’s wheelchair, which was parked at the end of the bed.

“No, I don’t think so,” Abigail said, and the wheelchair spun madly before crashing through the double doors and out of sight.

“Abigail,” Quinn said evenly. “Maybe you have an argument with Joshua and me, but Russell is an innocent bystander…”

Abigail smirked. “Russell is like me.”

Quinn started. The evasiveness she’d sensed? Was that part of all this? But he’d been angry at Abigail in Mary’s dream.
Why did you kill them, Abigail, why did you do it?

“I don’t think so, Abigail.”

Of its own volition, the curtain flew away from Russell’s bed.

The boy was sitting up, one arm draped through the trapeze. His face looked…dark.

“Russell,” Quinn said.

“Tell her, Russell, about the things
you
did.”

Russell did not answer.

“He’s the one who messed up the computers and made a mess in surgery. Didn’t you, Russell?”

Russell did not answer.

“But he didn’t kill anyone,” Quinn said.

“Not yet…but they all deserved to die…that doctor…”

“What doctor?” Then she remembered Carter’s death in radiology. Abigail had been there when it happened.

“They all deserved to die,” Abigail repeated.

“Why?”

“I don’t have to tell you.”

That was the child in Abigail but there was something else, Quinn thought. Something malevolent, something ancient.

“You can tell me,” Quinn said reasonably. “You’re going to kill me too, aren’t you?”

“I’m not,” Abigail said. “I think
he
is.” She looked at Joshua, who stood motionless. “He should be the one to do it.”

Quinn tried not to react, sensing that the child was enjoying this game.

“He’s going to wait until dark…”

Quinn glanced at Russell, trying to fathom what was going on in his mind. If he was like Abigail…had some sort of power…was he also evil?

Something was building in him, she thought. His body was drawn tight, like a spring under incredible tension.

She knew that he was very close to Joshua.

“What are you going to do with Joshua after he…does what you want him to do?” Quinn asked. The room was getting dark and she could barely make out Abigail’s face. Joshua was outlined against the window.

“I won’t have to do anything to him.”

Quinn hoped that Russell was listening and that he had some human compassion left, some kindness in him.

“I’m pretty sure he’ll kill himself,” Abigail added, and tilted her head, regarding him thoughtfully. “If he feels guilty enough. That’s what my mother did.”

It was past dusk.

“Can I turn on the light?”

“No…”

The television, overhead, lit up, the screen flickering in the dimness. It cast enough light that Quinn could see: Joshua was still at the window and Abigail was watching him. Russell had swung his legs off the bed but was still hanging on the trapeze.

“It’s time,” Abigail said, and in spite of herself, Quinn felt her heart begin to pound.

Joshua turned slowly away from the window.

His face was expressionless, his eyes blank. He moved slowly, as though he’d forgotten how to walk after having been frozen in place so long. Quinn watched as he drew near to her, and realized that she couldn’t move; whatever Abigail had been doing to him, she was now doing to her…

“No!” Russell said.

With effort, Quinn looked in his direction.

Russell was standing on spindly, shaking legs, his face intent. “I won’t let you do it, Abigail, I won’t let you kill anyone else.”

Joshua had stopped, two feet away from her.

“Why did you kill them, Abigail, why did you do it?”

“I had to,” Abigail said. “They were going to hurt us. Hurt
you,
Russell. They already
did
hurt you. I had to protect you! To protect all of us!”

“No.” Russell shook his head. “That’s what you want me to believe, but I know better. “

“I did it to protect you!”

“You did it because you wanted the rest of us to be like you.”

“I—”

“You wanted to hurt us too, because you don’t have anyone who loves you. You wanted to kill everyone who loves us.”

“No! I never hurt your father,” Abigail said urgently, getting off her bed and walking toward Russell. “I wouldn’t…”

“I saw you do all those things, and I didn’t stop you,” Russell said. He had let go of the trapeze and was standing on his own. “I didn’t stop you.” His voice was immeasurably sad. “But I
will
stop you now.”

“You can’t,” Abigail said desperately. She had reached his bed, and looked up at him. “Don’t you know? Don’t you really understand?
It
wants me to do it.
It
wants someone to die.”

“Then it can have me,” Russell said.

“Russell, no,” Quinn said.

He took a halting step forward. “Take me, Abigail. Because if you hurt either of them, I’ll kill myself…”

“No!” Abigail screamed, and looked fearfully over her shoulder at the east corner of the room where blue light arced in the dimness. Tendrils of light snaked toward them, crackling and smelling of burned electrical wire.

“Like your mother,” Russell said softly. “You’ll be alone here with only that,” he glanced at the coils of light, “for the rest of your life.”

Tears glistened in Abigail’s eyes. She turned and looked once more at the corner where the light was increasing in intensity until it was a brilliant white. The glow was reflected in the tears which streamed down her face.

She glanced back at Russell. “It wants someone to die,” she repeated. Then she turned and rushed forward, her arms reaching out for the light, the tendrils shooting up both arms and all over her body. The light pulsed and brightened, and Abigail burst into flames.

The fire spread up her body in tiny, licking flames.

Suddenly freed, Quinn reached for Abigail, but as she did, the child disappeared from sight, gone without a trace, and the light receded back to the corner of the room where flames began to shoot up the wall.

Joshua slumped to the floor.

“My God,” Quinn said.

“Get him out of here,” Russell said, “the whole place is going to go up…”

“What about you?” She could feel herself aching to go to Joshua, but the boy had saved their lives.

“I’ll get out,” he said. “I can walk. Just get him out of here.”

Quinn pulled a bedspread from the closest bed and folded it in lengthwise pleats, lifting Joshua enough to get the fabric under him, then moving him to the other side so she could pull it through. She lifted the two corners above his head and pulled him across the floor, through the double doors and out, grateful that there was a ramp and not stairs.

It was cold outside and it chilled the perspiration on her body as she tugged and pulled until they were both a safe distance from the ward. She checked his carotid pulse—he looked lifeless—and was reassured by its steady beat.

Just as she got to her feet to go back in after Russell, she saw him silhouetted in the door against a backdrop of flames.

She ran to him, catching him as he began to fall, his weakened legs giving way under the strain of unfamiliar use. He was light in her arms.

All at once there were people swarming around and she allowed them to take over, getting Joshua onto a stretcher, and someone took Russell from her, carrying him toward the main building.

But she stayed and watched until certain that the building was fully afire…

Over the roar of the flames came the delicate sound of wind chimes.

MONDAY

Epilogue

Quinn sat at Joshua’s bedside, watching him as he slept.

All of the tests were negative: his EEG was normal (she could still hear Abigail saying “I emptied his brain”), x-rays and lab work all normal.

Simon Harrington stood at the end of the bed.

“Tell me again, Quinn.”

She looked at him with tired eyes. “I honestly don’t know what happened, I can only guess.”

“Then your best guess.”

“It was the ward,” a voice came from behind them.

A woman stood in the door.

“Maggie,” Simon said. “When did you get back?”

She walked into the room, a strikingly attractive woman with silver hair. She looked at Joshua. “Will he be all right?”

“We think so,” Quinn said.

“I should never have let him open up the ward,” Maggie Connelly said quietly.

Simon and Quinn exchanged a look.

“He can be very persuasive,” Maggie said, and smiled at Quinn. “He wanted a place away from the rest of the hospital…and he knew it was standing empty.”

“You mean,” Quinn said, watching the woman’s face, “something else happened there.” The ghostly images on the tape.

“Yes…long ago. They closed the building, boarded it up. There was a lot of superstition surrounding it, but eventually it all died down and people forgot.” Her eyes were troubled. “I never forgot. But…I thought it was just one crazy man…”

“And now you think it was the ward.”

Maggie nodded. “I don’t know what…but
something
was there…” She fell silent and her eyes grew distant.

The face at the window.

Maggie began to walk toward the window.

The face grinned at her wickedly and then disappeared from the square of glass.

Maggie could feel her heart pounding in her chest and her mouth was suddenly dry.

She did not want to look through that window, but she had to…something was compelling her to look at its handiwork.

All she could see at first was the color red.

The walls and floor were covered with blood.

There were bodies on the floor…she closed her eyes, feeling the bile rise in her throat.

Not this, she thought, and steadied herself with a hand against the door.

They were mutilated, great gaping wounds in their chests and abdomens. Things, which looked quite unlike the drawings in her nursing books, spilled out of the wounds.

The man sat among them, like a child surrounded by his favorite toys. As she watched, he dipped his fingers into the blood and drew a wavy line on a bare leg.

Then, with a glance at the door, as if he knew she were watching, he reached into a body, tearing something loose and moving it toward his mouth.

Maggie fainted.

“They were all seriously disturbed,” Maggie said, finally. “But something in that place brought it out of them…” She shivered, hearing in her mind the words spoken so many years ago:

“They should have known not to put those people out there…so far from the main building.

“Being isolated like that can’t be good for a weak mind.”

After Simon and Maggie had left, Quinn sat, holding Joshua’s hand, fighting against her own exhaustion.

She would stay with him until he woke up and spoke to her, so she would know he was going to be all right.

She would stay.

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