Page 2 of Revenant

The hospital is aware of what happened…because who else would allow them to enter my locked room?

I drag up the hem of my shirt and grimace when I see the perfect outline of a boot print where a fucker stomped on my ribs. From my collarbone down, I’m a mess of bruises and scrapes. I grimace when I pull down my shirt, then fork my hands through my messy hair and rest my elbows on my knees, cradling my aching head. My latest round of meds is a cocktaildesigned to keep me groggy. A ghost of a headache lingers near my temples and never seems to go away.

I laugh humorlessly at my own joke.

Fucking ghosts.

Although, to be honest, being sent to the psych ward wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened to me. I’m starting to get a handle on my little ghost problem, mostly through trial by fire, but I’m still alive, so I’ll take that as a win.

When I yawn, pain spears my jaw. I reach up and prod the area, grimacing when dried blood flakes down to pepper the grungy shirt inmates are forced to wear. An inch-long scrape runs along my jaw, the slightest touch warning me I will have a nasty bruise from where I twisted away from the blow aimed to crush my throat.

I drop my hand with a sigh and glance around the four-by-six-foot prison cell.

Padded rooms are real.

Who knew?

They call them “calming areas.”

Calming, my ass!

They are nasty as fuck. The smell of sweat and despair clings to the vinyl fabric decorating every inch of the room. I now understand why they call it a rubber room—throw yourself at them, and you just bounce off. Stains mar almost every surface, the pads so old, they are hard as rocks.

That didn’t stop people from clawing at the walls, and I shudder at the jagged, bloody nails that are still embedded in the pads from where they were ripped right to the quick from desperate fingers. A few spots even have teeth marks where the previous occupants fucking tried to chew their way out, if the indentations are to be believed.

I grimace at what would drive a person to try and eat a fucking wall.

Then again, from the lax way they feed people, maybe it’s not so farfetched.

After three months of unending isolation, I can understand how it could drive a person a bit batty. I might not like people very much, but even I miss socializing. If I wasn’t able to see and hear ghosts, I’m not sure how well my sanity would have fared.

But, after saying that phrase in my head, maybe that ship has already sailed.

I glance around my small room, not even flinching at the sight of a dozen or so ghosts filling the cramped space. The spirits are barely more than shadows, a sea of blurry shapes. The walls bulge and ripple as more try to push through, but the fresh drops of my blood christening the cell must be keeping away the worst of the lot. The ghosts are such a frequent sight now, my constant companions, that their presence is almost a comfort, which is a frightening thought in itself.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, but the sanitarium is full of troubled spirits. Some are trapped, a few poor souls don’t understand they are dead, while others are just as crazy as when they were first admitted to the hospital. One or two special souls are malicious assholes, content to stay and cause mischief.

Those bastards are scary as fuck.

Dealing with a normal ghost is hard enough.

An insane one?

Impossible.

I almost feel bad for the ones that have been here for over a hundred years, the torment they suffered written on their broken and tattered bodies, where doctors had used them as experiments. Not surprisingly, a lot of the ghosts are women who were admitted to the hospital for something as simple as their family didn’t want to take care of an aging spinster or they wanted the money of an ailing aunt. A shocking numberof women were locked away for daring to cheat on their spouses. The most tragic ghosts are the young women who were locked away for something as heartbreaking as getting pregnant without the luxury of being married.

People can be fucking awful.

But not all of the ghosts fall under that category.

Some of the residents still haunting the halls are crazy as fuck, not a speck of sanity remaining in their empty black eyes. They are the worst of the lot, doing their best to drive everyone else around them as insane as them.

Singing at all hours of the day and night.

Screaming or laughing hysterically.

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