Page 68 of Into the Dark

Nigel lay atop an operating table, its steel surface gone black with corrosion. He didn’t turn his head at the crash of the doors, didn’t even crack open his closed eyes. His skin had gone utterly white, lips tinged cyanotic blue.

The doctor stood over him, the exposed portion of his face crawling with infection. The corruption spread out, with him in the epicenter, tendrils slicking the concrete floor and rotting the storage cabinets. The pile of bandages waiting to be used were stiff with pus and blood, the tools on the surgical tray covered in rust. An autoclave lay on its side on the floor, door torn off, something putrid leaking from within.

He took it all in an instant before the smell hit him. Disease, gangrene, and rot of every kind formed a miasma so thick he gagged. Zeek swore beside him and stretched his shirt up in a futile attempt to cover his nose.

The doctor held a bone saw above Nigel’s chest, its ragged teeth black with old blood. At their entrance, he straightened, swinging the deadly blade toward them instead.

“Nurse Young.”The doctor’s voice gurgled as though forced through a coating of phlegm.“Have you come to assist?”

She swiped at him, and the bone saw flew across the room, clattering against the wall.

“Of course.”The doctor sounded resigned rather than angry.“Your small mind could never understand. I cured the patients everyone else said were hopeless, because only I dared to cut away the diseases of the body that played havoc on their minds.”

While the ghosts were distracted with one another, Oscar ran to Nigel’s side. “Babe?” he whispered, cradling his face.

Nigel’s skin burned like fire against his fingers, and every breath was a labored gasp. His body was utterly limp, not responding to Oscar’s frantic touch.

He needed to get to a hospital right now. Assuming it wasn’t already too late.

To hell with the ghosts, the asylum, his legacy, everything else. Oscar slid his arms under Nigel’s body, intending to carry him out of there.

“I think not,”the doctor said, and the surgery doors slammed shut.

Chris let out a strangled cry, and they and Zeek both threw themselves against the doors. They were swinging doors, there wasn’t even a lock, and yet they remained immobile. Held in place by the implacable will of the dead.

Nurse Young let out a shriek that froze Oscar to his marrow and flung herself at Dr. Wilkes. For an instant, both of them seemed to stutter, like a film whose frames were out of order. Then she was blown back, her form going even more transparent than before.

“Not this time, I think,”the doctor said.

A whirlwind arose in the room, tearing at Oscar’s hair and clothing. To his horror, he saw the rusty surgical instrumentsrise into the air and join the rest of the debris picked up by the wind.

“Look out!” he yelled, and flung himself on top of Nigel’s body to protect him.

Something struck him, drawing a line of fiery pain across his scalp. A medical tray hit his shoulder, and other voices cried out as the rest were battered as well. Adrienne shrieked, and he spared a glance to see her staring at a scalpel protruding from the back of her hand, before Chris tackled her out of the way of a toppling cabinet.

The doctor rose into the air, the eye of the storm. Nurse Young fought her way toward him through a whirlwind more than just physical. Dr. Wilkes tore aside his surgical mask, revealing a mouth filled with rotting teeth and ringed with bloody sores.

“You’re weak,”he told her contemptuously.“And I am out of patience.”

A ghostly scalpel appeared in his hand, and he brought it down across her throat.

There was no blood—she wasn’t alive, after all—but her head slowly toppled back as though barely connected to the rest of her.

Then she vanished, all of her energy dispersed into the air.

Their best weapon against the doctor, the man she’d killed in life, and now she was gone.

The doctor’s filmy gaze met Oscar’s, and the bone saw reappeared in his hand.

“Now,”he said,“where were we?”

Oscar lay frozen over Nigel’s body, feeling him gasp what might be his last breaths, as the doctor approached.

“I have to thank you for weakening that meddling woman with your trap,”Dr. Wilkes said, his voice like a cold finger digging in Oscar’s ear.“It made defeating her much easier.”

“No,” Zeek moaned from somewhere on the floor.

The doctor smiled, skin splitting like overripe fruit.“Don’t worry—I see your troubled minds. I’m going to make it all better. I just need to cut out the infection.”

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