Page 69 of Into the Dark

As he approached, Oscar frantically cast about for something, anything, to do. His thoughts scattered like leaves, even as the windstorm around the doctor began to die down.

Because he’d expended too much energy against Nurse Young? But even if he had, what could Oscar do?

The whirlwind had twisted around the reflector arms attached to the old-fashioned surgical light. Oscar’s own face stared back at him from one of the mirrored surfaces. Expression drawn with terror, skin pale, blood slicking his hair on one side where something sharp had hit him.

Why had he ever thought he could come here and release the asylum’s ghosts? His grandmother had been a trained medium, and she had failed: first at Cloven Oak Distillery, then here.

Of course, here she’d been drugged out of her mind. Oscar didn’t even have that excuse.

He’d failed. Let down his mamaw, and her mamaw, and every other medium in his lineage.

They’d succeeded at Cloven Oak, sure. But that wasn’t down to him; it was because he’d had Nigel, Chris, and Tina at his back.

Nigel lay dying, and the other reflectors caught individual faces: Chris, Zeek, Adrienne, Dr. Lawson. All of them huddled against the wall, trapped and afraid and alone.

No, not alone. They were all here together. With him.

Maybe he wasn’t enough by himself.

Maybe he didn’t have to be.

“Salt!” he bellowed. “Hit him with everything you’ve got! Now!”

He’d lost his canister somewhere, but Chris ripped open their backpack, bags and canisters of salt spilling out. Adrienne dove for one canister, tore it open, and started flinging handfuls at Dr. Wilkes.

The grains tore holes in his ghostly form, and he let out a howl of fury that rattled the fillings in Oscar’s teeth.“Stop that right now!”

He flung out a hand, and Adrienne went skidding back. But Zeek took her place, a canister in each hand, hurling streams of salt in every direction. Most of it hit the doctor, and he flinched back with another enraged howl.

“Stop this! I am the doctor here! You’re sick—in need of treatment!”

“I’m a doctor, too,” Lawson said. “Here’syourtreatment.”

She hit him square in the face with a handful of salt, sending him reeling back. Chris and Zeek joined her, and a moment later Adrienne was on her feet again. They encircled Wilkes, driving him back against the surgical table. Holes opened in his form, but it wouldn’t take long before he fled to regroup.

Oscar couldn’t let that happen.

“You’re so obsessed with cutting out disease,” he said, grabbing one of the reflector arms. “Then look! Look and see—you’rethe true infection here!”

He swung the mirrored surface so the doctor had no choice but to stare straight into his own ruined face. Wilkes flung his arms up, as if to shield himself from the sight.“No! It isn’t me. It can’t be.”

Oscar slid off the operating table as the rest closed ranks behind him. “You’re the rot at the heart of this place,” Oscar said,thrusting the reflector out, driving the doctor back.“Youare what needs to be excised.”

Using everything he’d learned, he focused his will on opening a door in the veil. It formed behind the doctor, silvery light spilling out, something only mediums and the dead could see.

“Spirit!” he shouted. “Your time in this world is done. Move on and be healed. Leave this place, and trouble the living no more!”

The last words came with a great rush of breath and force. The doctor cried out, cringing away from Oscar, the salt, and the hated sight of his own corruption. For an instant, he was outlined in white light…then he was through the veil, and the door collapsed on its own accord.

Oscar almost fell as the effort of holding it open suddenly gave way. Chris grabbed his elbow. “Are you okay? Is he gone?”

“He’s gone—but we have to get Nigel to the hospital.” Oscar spun back to the operating table.

Nigel coughed weakly—then harder. Then he rolled onto his side, and ectoplasm poured out of his mouth and nose, spattering the table which was now ordinary, dusty steel.

“Nigel!” Oscar put his arm around Nigel’s narrow shoulders to elevate him. “It’s going to be okay. Just hold on.”

Nigel groaned and wiped greenish ectoplasm from his face. “I feel like shit,” he mumbled. He coughed, then spat more ectoplasm. “But I can breathe again.”

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