Trouble is, fairy tales got monsters in ‘em.
I was at home studyin’ for the last college final when she called me from work. I’d been out of the Army and married for two years, an’ in all that time I’d never heard her sound so strained or upset. I had my shoes on before I knew what was wrong, an’ in the end all she could say that made any sense was, “Please hurry.”
I’d been in and outta the hospital plenty of times over the past year, picking Annie up from work or just coming by to say hello. I knew a lotta the names and faces, and most folks were ready to stop and talk a minute, especially late at night like it was now. But the place was just about deserted, an’ the people I saw were strained and unhappy, like somethin’ might jump outta the shadows if they stopped by them for too long. I tried asking after Annie, but nobody would answer, so I took myself up to where she usually worked.
She wasn’t there. I started to let myself get worried then, and grabbed a nurse who was passing by. “Where’s Annie Muldoon? She usually works here.”
The lady pulled away like she was afraid, instead of just annoyed at my rudeness. She whispered, “I’m not sure. They called everyone with any psychiatric experience up to the third floor a while ago. Annie went up there.” She gave herself a shake and blinked like she was seeing me for the first time. “You’re her husband, right? She called you before she went up. All the patients up there woke up all at once and started screaming about seeing visions. The same visions, all of them.”
“Wait a minute. Woke up?”
“It’s our long-term illness ward.” The nurse was pulling herself together now that she had somebody to lecture about hospital regulations. “One or two of the patients up there are actually comatose, breathing on their own but surviving through IV feeds. Others are terminally ill and spend a great deal of time in medically induced comas for their own comfort.”
Sounded like hell. Dying quick and getting it over with seemed like the best way to go, to me. But I kept my mouth shut, listening as the lady said, “They’ve all woken up, even the ones who were comatose. Nothing will put them back down, and there’s something…something dreadful about their faces. Like there’s no living mind inside them anymore, just some kind of anger trying to escape. I went up to help but I couldn’t bear it. Almost no one’s been able to stay near them for long. Anne is very brave.”
I muttered, “Yeah. Yeah, she is,” and bolted for the third floor. The nurse called, “She said you helped someone who had visions once! That’s why she called you in!”
Annie was putting too much faith in me. I hadn’t done a damned thing to help her Pa. Something else had happened that day, something I didn’t understand, but it was bigger than me. And I was expecting something bigger than me was at work in the third floor hospital ward, too. All I wanted was to get Annie out of it.
About twenty feet down the hall from the ward I got a cold-skin tingle like I hadn’t had since Korea. I stopped, letting that cold wash all over, an’ then I backed up into one of the private rooms and looked for weapons. Not once in the two years since I’d got out had I missed having a knife or gun on hand, but right then I started feeling the lack. An IV post was something, at least, an’ I crept back toward the ward with it, feeling grim.
Voices were raised in a babble, in there. Men an’ women alike, all of ‘em sounding like madness had taken over. Annie’s pop hadn’t been like that. He’d been a sane crazy person, just painting the pictures that came to his head. Didn’t sound like anybody in the ward was painting anything at all.
Showed what I knew. I pushed the door open a couple inches an’ ran into a body. White coat, splashed with red: one of the doctors. I knew the fella’s name, but couldn’t remember it. Didn’t matter just then. I dropped down low, taking a quick look through the cracked-open door.
Somebody across the room was painting, making big splashes across the walls in blood. I got colder, a different kinda cold I knew from Korea. I’d felt it going into battle, knowing somebody was gonna end up dead and preparing to do everything possible to make sure it wasn’t me. Killer cold, that’s what it was, and I didn’t like it, but I figured I’d like dying even less. I shoved the door open, stepped inside, an’ took in a mess as bad as I’d ever seen in Korea.
Eight patients, all in hospital robes an’ bare feet, were spread around the room. Two doctors and a nurse were on the floor, and another patient was sittin’ on the nurse, scooping her eyeballs out and eatin’ them. One more was the one painting on the wall, working on some kinda design I bet nobody but her wanted finished, and licking her fingers between lines. She was thin, like all of ‘em, with withered muscle and skin that hadn’t seen sunlight in way too long. They were moving like they’d forgotten how, stiff an’ uncoordinated, but they’d moved somehow, ‘cause somebody’d killed the doctors an’ the nurse. One by one they started dropping down beside the bodies, and eating them raw.
The dead cold feeling I’d gotten fighting the starlight demon got stronger. A memory rose up, a memory of something I sure as hell had never seen and didn’t much want to now: three dead girls spread around a park, their guts tying ‘em to each other at three points of a diamond. I saw their souls rising up and being gobbled down by a black-eyed beast that got a little stronger with every bite it took.
The whole idea shifted, set down over the scene in front of me, and clicked into place. The patients weren’t getting stronger with every bite they took, but something linking them together was. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it taking all the warmth outta the air, and seething with rage and triumph. All that anger turned ‘round and ‘round, focusing itself, waiting until it was strong enough to strike.
And it was gonna strike at Annie.
She was squashed into a corner, holding a broken-off bed rail in one hand and a bedside lamp without a shade in the other. The closest dead doctor wasn’t more than a couple feet from her. I thought maybe he was dead ‘cause he’d put himself between her an’ the patients who were now eating him. She looked half scared to death, and all determined not to die.
Took me about half a second to take all that in. I was kicking the first patient off the doctor at the door before I was even done looking around. The patient snarled an’ I swung my IV pole like a bat, cracking him along the jaw. He fell back and didn’t move again, which was enough for me. The second one wasn’t quite eating anybody yet. I kicked him away, too, and winced when he clobbered his head on a bed leg. Dunno why that bothered me when hitting him myself wouldn’t have, but he slumped, dazed, and that was all that really mattered.
The next couple of patients were women, and any other time I mighta had a problem with that, too. Guessed I wasn’t so chivalrous when there were folks eating other people’s eyebrows. The fourth one went down, leaving four or five more to go, but a scream rose up outta the air and the cold anger gathering pulled itself together enough to have a shape. It pulled the patients with it as it moved. Even the ones I’d knocked out slithered along the floor, dragged by the times that bound them. The demon got more solid and angrier with every step it took.
I stopped worrying about the woman painting on the wall, about all of the still-conscious patients slurping down entrails, an’ vaulted two beds to slam the IV pole into the thing’s back when it was barely three feet from Annie.
The thing lashed forward as it fell, scraping Annie’s cheek with its nails, and burst in a wave of eye-watering heat. It was gone, fast as that. Annie screamed and twitched sideways, tryin’ ta avoid my IV pole weapon. I nearly stabbed her anyway, ‘cause I twitched too, both of us going to our strong side: me left, and her to the right, which meant we were both heading the same way. I let out a shout and wrenched even further sideways. The pole hit the wall an’ skittered across, leaving a scar that ended in a down-stroke when I hit the floor and dropped it. My heart felt like somebody was squeezing it, panic finally setting in, but I didn’t know what was goin’ on behind me. I rolled over, almost on my feet again when it came home that everybody in the room had dropped without a sound. Everybody but me and Annie. She flung herself against my chest and we sat down with a grunt, both of us panting and gasping. My shirt got wet from her bloody cheek pressing against my chest, but I could feelin her breathing and she could hear my heart pounding, all of it telling us we were both still alive.