Page 66 of Into the Dark

Hands formed out of the fog, latching onto Oscar’s feet and calves. He tripped forward, palms scraping the concrete beneath the fog. The salt canister went flying out of his hands, spilling a trail of crystals as it went.

The others were yelling as well, as spectral hands emerged from the fog to drag them down. Zeek managed to dump salt out onto the ones holding him, but as soon as he charged in Chris’s direction, more emerged to cling to his legs.

Oscar tried to focus his will. “Spirits! I?—”

The hands yanked him backward, dragging him with shocking speed across the rough and pitted floor. He managed to twist onto his side, backpack catching on the concrete and nearly yanked off over his head. The hands pulled him toward the opendoors of the elevator, where dozens more groping arms emerged through the walls of the car.

“No!” he shouted—then he was inside. The hands clutched at him—pulling on his hair, wrapping around his waist, pinning him against the back of the elevator. One of them tried to remove his pack, but a strap was still hooked around his shoulder. For a moment, they were in a tug-of-war—then the backpack split open, spilling out extra batteries, the Faraday cloth…

And the Devil’s Toy Box.

Oscar managed to get a hold of the mirror box an instant before any of the flailing dead hands did. Holding it high over his head, he brought it down on the elevator floor.

The box shattered.

“Stop!”

Oscar didn’t hear the command so much as feel it reverberate throughout his entire body.

The hands released him, and even the fog coiled away. The chorus of shouts from the others fell silent as they too were released by the undead.

A thin mist rose from the broken pieces of the mirror box, coalescing into the semi-transparent shape he’d seen once before, on the fourth floor hallway the first night they came to the asylum. The shape that he’d seen in the staff photo, taken not that long before the fire that killed her.

Della Young glared down at him, her eyes mere pits in her face. She wore her nurse’s uniform as always, the cap and apron crisp and unstained. All the force of her regard—her anger—bore down on him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and started to hold up his hand before he realized how useless the gesture was. “We thought you were trying to hurt us. You were trying to protect us, weren’t you?”

“Oscar?” Adrienne asked. “Can you see her?”

He nodded, not looking away from the nurse. In answer to his question, she nodded once, curtly.

“You’ve been guarding this place against Dr. Wilkes’s spirit ever since you died, haven’t you?” It was a dangerous question—he’d read that some spirits didn’t like being told they were dead, would react violently to the mere suggestion.

But she nodded again.“Yes.”He wasn’t sure her voice was audible to anyone but him.“Kept the patients away from here. Away from him.”

The heart of his power must be down here—which made sense if he’d done his cruel operations on this basement level. “And since the asylum closed, you’ve been trying to chase away anyone who came inside.”

Another nod.

This was why she’d tried to keep the other ghosts from talking to them, hoping they’d leave if they didn’t get answers. Why she’d done her best to terrify them.

And the investigators who had come here so many years ago. Kyle’s death really had been an accident.

“I’m sorry we misunderstood. We made a mistake…and as you can see, we could really use your help fixing it.”

She stared down at him with those empty sockets: cold, judging. Well, in her place, he’d be feeling pretty judgmental too: locked up by a bunch of fools who refused to run away from danger, then freed in order to help them clean up the mess they’d made.

“I want to help the spirits of this asylum cross over,” he said, hoping honesty was the best policy in this case. “They’ve been trapped here in their suffering for too long.”

Her voice was a rasp along his nerves.“They follow his commands, in hopes he will restore what he took from them. But it is a false promise, like all his lies.”

He half-dreaded to ask, but did anyway. “One of our friends is missing. Does…is he with the doctor?”

“Yes.”She turned away and began to glide across the room, the fog rolling away from her like waves before the prow of a grand ship.“I am weak from my time in your trap. But I must stop Dr. Wilkes from operating.”

“O-Operating?” Oh god. Nigel.

Oscar scrambled to his feet, grabbed one of the salt canisters from his spilled backpack, and hurried after her. The others were getting to their feet, Chris leaning heavily against the cold boiler that had almost devoured them.

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