Meds Page 27

  “Hang her,” Langheim sighed, turning to the guard. “For God's sake, get on with it.”

  “Henderson,” Donovan said, nodding at the guard. “If you please.”

  “I will not die!” Mary screamed. “I will never -”

  Before she could finish, the wooden floor beneath her feet gave way and she dropped down, letting out a gasp as the noose tightened and snapped her neck. She wriggled for a moment, hanging several feet above the ground, and her eyes bulged as the final vestiges of life ebbed from her body. Still twitching slightly, she let out a few more pained, gasping clicks before the guard grabbed her legs and quickly pulled her toward the floor, eliciting one final grunt from her mouth before she died. Letting go of her legs, the guard stood back and watched in calm silence for a moment as her body hung from the noose.

  “Make sure of it,” Donovan muttered.

  “Sir?”

  “The usual.”

  “Even with a woman?”

  “Make sure she's dead.”

  Hesitating for a moment, the soldier finally took out a cigarette lighter. Holding it up, he flicked the side and then moved the flame to Mary's chin, burning the flesh for a moment before stepping back.

  “She's dead alright,” he reported. “I'll put her in the pit with the rest.”

  “I enjoyed that,” Langheim said finally, turning to Donovan. “I hated her with more passion than I can ever describe. Her talk of witchcraft and the occult was enough to drive me to tears. The foolish woman probably still believed she would find a way back from death, even as her neck broke.”

  “We should get moving,” Donovan told him, heading to the door. “The sooner we can get you to American soil, the sooner you can start telling our men what you need. I think you'll like America. It'll be a culture shock, but I'm pretty damn sure you'll get on just fine.”

  “Most certainly,” Langheim replied, following him from the room. “The war has been interesting, but I wouldn't mind a change of pace. I look forward to seeing what life in America is like.”

  Behind them, the guard started to take down Mary Langheim's body, ready for burial in an unmarked grave.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Today

  “It's going to be okay,” Elly whispered, shivering as she sat on a chair in the ambulance, next to Rachel's trolley. Night had fallen, and she could hear Kirsten still working outside in the ruins of the building. For hours now, Kirsten had been searching for some kind of message from Annie Radford, and even nightfall hadn't slowed her. Elly, meanwhile, had retreated to the relative warmth of the ambulance. Exhausted and drained, she knew there was still no chance she'd get to sleep. “Everything's going to be okay,” she muttered. “There's no -”

  She stopped suddenly as she heard a faint bumping sound on the side of the ambulance. Even though she knew it was probably just something that had been tossed up by the wind, she couldn't shake the fear that there might be more ghosts around. After all, she'd already seen a nun earlier in the day. Her cellphone was nearby, but she didn't dare light the screen, in case she found ghosts all around.

  “Everything's going to be fine,” she continued, as much for her benefit as for anyone else's. “This is a dream, it has to be. I'm just in a very realistic dream and any moment now -”

  “Are you talking to yourself?” Kirsten asked suddenly, stepping into view at the ambulance's rear door and tossing her shovel loudly onto the floor. “That's the first sign of madness, you know.”

  “I don't think you can lecture anyone about madness,” Elly replied. “You're out of your mind.”

  “I need to go and take another look at what's left of the basement,” Kirsten continued. “I still feel as if I'm missing something. Jerry used to do a lot of work down there, and the husks might have been linked to all of this. I guess I'm getting desperate, but there's something I'm just not seeing.” She turned to walk away, before stopping and glancing back. “Stay in here, you'll be safer. Besides, there are a lot of ghosts out tonight, and you might even be able to see some of them without any help. I've seen more than a few old friends since night fell. Doctor Inoue, Doctor Lava, Doctor Campbell... The gang's all here, so to speak. All haunting the place.”

  As Kirsten made her way off into the darkness, Elly pulled her knees closer to her chest and continued to shiver in the back of the ambulance. Her cellphone had no service, so she couldn't call for help, and with her ankles still badly damaged she knew she could never manage to hike away from Lakehurst and search for help. For now, her only option was to stay with Kirsten and hope for a chance to get hold of the keys to the ambulance, which so far she hadn't been able to locate. In fact, she was starting to think that maybe -

  Suddenly her phone lit up, and her ring-tone began to play.

  “Seriously?” she whispered, reaching out to grab the phone. She figured she must have miraculously picked up some service again, but when she looked at the flashing screen she felt her heart thud in her chest.

  The call was from her mother.

  “That's impossible,” Elly whispered, hesitating to answer. “There's no way you can -”

  Suddenly the ringing stopped, and the screen became dark again.

  Elly sat in silence, trying to work out what had just happened. Her mother had died several years ago, and although she'd faked hundreds of phone conversations with her in the intervening years, she'd always known they were fake. She'd never deluded herself into thinking that her mother might still somehow be out there.

  She held her breath.

  Suddenly the phone began to ring again, and again it was her mother trying to get through. This time, Elly tapped the screen to answer, before placing the phone against the side of her face.

  On the other end of the line, there was nothing except a faint, low rumble.

  “Hello?” Elly said, seeing her own breath in the air. “Is... Hello?”

  The rumble continued, along with what sounded like something dripping in the distance.

  “Hello?” Elly continued. “Is that... Who is this? How did you get this number?”

  She waited, and slowly a voice began to be heard, rising through the rumble and static.

  “Go and take a look,” the voice said suddenly. “What are you afraid of? Come on, I'll show you.”

  “What?” Elly replied, looking along toward the ambulance's open doors and seeing nothing but darkness outside. “I'm sorry, who is this? How did you get my -”

  “You trust me, don't you?” the voice asked, and suddenly it sounded clearer, almost familiar. “Yes, wait a minute darling, I'll be with you. Now listen, you must go and take a look. It's perfectly simple. You can get down here with no trouble at all, if you just think about it.”

  “Mom?” Elly whispered, recognizing the voice. “Mom, is that you?”

  “Go and look!”

  Crawling across the floor, Elly reached the doors and peered out. She could see the ruins all around, picked out in patches of moonlight, and a little further off she could just about make out Annie's grave, complete with the dead body wrapped in a sheet next to the shattered coffin.

  “Now why do you think it was put there,” her mother's voice continued, “of all places?”

  “Mom?” Elly said. “Where are you? This isn't possible, you're... Mom, what's happening?”

  “It's a marker. It's there to show you the way, you just -” She paused. “Oh, I have to go. I swear, this child knows how to nag. Something about sunglasses. Just go and look, and you'll see.” Another pause. “Yes, I know, look you -”

  The call cut off suddenly, leaving Elly at the edge of the ambulance, still looking out at the grave. Bringing up her mother's number again, she tried to call back, only to get the familiar tone that indicated a number that was no longer in use.

  “Mom?” she whispered, before climbing down off the back of the ambulance and starting to make her way toward the grave. Looking around, she saw broken sections of wall, and after a moment she realized she could see a fi
gure moving through the darkness. She stopped, but just as she was about to call out to Kirsten, she realized that the figure was a man. As he came into view, he could be seen carrying a large bag, while he muttered to himself as if he had no idea that Elly was watching him. A moment later, the edge of the bag fell open slightly and a human skull fell out. The man cursed and picked it up, dropping it back into the bag before continuing on his way, heading toward the trees as his bag of skulls rattled. All Elly could do was stand and stare in horror, until the ghostly figure had disappeared into the night.

  “It's gonna blow, you know,” a voice said suddenly.

  She turned and saw a younger man, in his twenties or maybe early thirties, carrying some old computer equipment past.

  “The boiler,” the man continued, heading off into the darkness. “The whole goddamn place is gonna go up in flames.”

  “Wait!” Elly called out, hurrying after him, only to find that he was already gone. “Hey, come back! Are you -”

  Turning, she almost tripped over something poking up from the ground. Looking down, she saw to her horror that a broken fragment of an old tombstone was resting in the grass, and there was just enough left for her to read the inscription:

  Sister Alice Copham

  1965 to 1995

  A faithful servant of God

  Spotting several other stones nearby, she looked around and realized that she felt as if she was being watched. Feeling something brushing against her shoulder, she turned again, convinced she'd find someone behind her, but there was no-one.

  “Kirsten?” she called out. “Kirsten, where are you?”

  “We all died here,” a voice said suddenly. “At least someone found us in the end.”

  Spinning around, Elly saw to her horror that a nun was standing right behind her. Stepping back, she felt a sharp pain in one of her damaged ankles and almost fell, but she managed to stay on her feet as she backed away slowly.

  “Poor Morris heard the voice too,” the nun continued. “Everyone who hears the voice ends up dead. That's the one blessed thing, really. It never gets time to take hold in one body for too long.”

  Turning, Elly limped away, picking her way around more broken stones until she reached the grave Kirsten had dug earlier. After everything she'd seen, she eyed the cloth-covered dead body of Annie Radford with caution, while edging closer to the edge of the grave and looking down into the darkness. At the bottom, she could see some broken pieces of wood, left behind after Kirsten had smashed the coffin. She took a step forward, before spotting movement out of the corner of her eye and turning to see that there were more nuns nearby, watching her as if they expected her to do something.

  “Mom?” she whispered, looking around. “Mom, are you here?”

  Convinced that her mother's ghost might be among the others, she took a step forward, but all she saw were more of the ghostly nuns. Her heart was pounding as she limped around the grave, and suddenly she realized that as the nuns made their way forward, they were starting to surround her. She turned, seeing the dead faces all around her, and then she realized she could hear a voice from nearby. Turning again, she saw that one of the nuns had come a little closer than the others and was just a few feet away.

  “I still hear the voice,” the closest nun said, with a hint of fear in her eyes. “The same one that spoke to you through your mother just now, I hear it in my head. I thought it would stop when I died, but he keeps us here. He won't let us leave.”

  “Who?” Elly asked. “What are you -”

  Suddenly she heard a loud crashing sound, and she turned to see that some of the distant trees were starting to fall, as if something large was moving through the dark forest. A second later, the ground shuddered briefly, followed by the sound of a pained cry. Silence fell for a moment, before Elly realized she could see something flitting through the moonlight, heading straight for the ambulance. Silence fell briefly, and a kind of calm descended; then, suddenly, the entire ambulance shot up several meters into the air and flipped over, before crashing down onto its side as its windows shattered. Instinctively, Elly took a step back, and then another, and then finally a third, and this time she felt herself losing her balance before finally she tipped back and tumbled down into the grave.

  As she fell, she heard the ambulance being thrown again.

  Landing hard, she let out a gasp as she felt a flash of pain in her left ankle. She immediately tried to stand, before looking up and seeing several of the nuns standing around the edge of the grave and staring down at her. In the distance, there was another loud thud, and the grave shook with such force that small amounts of soil rained down onto her. Trying not to panic, she crouched down and picked up the largest piece of broken wood left over from the coffin, figuring that she might be able to use the cracked end to defend herself. A moment later, the grave shook again, more violently this time, and she was knocked onto her side.

  “Elly!” a voice shouted in the distance.

  “Kirsten?” she whispered, before cupping her hands around her mouth. “I'm in the grave!” she shouted. “There's a -”

  Before she could finish, the grave shook again and she fell against the side as more soil rained down on top of her. She looked up at the top, just as there was another loud bang. Suddenly a shape appeared, silhouetted against the night sky, and a moment later Kirsten clambered into the grave, with the motionless body of Thomas Clay Lacy in her arms as she dropped down next to Elly and set Lacy on the broken wood.

  “What's going on up there?” Elly asked as the grave shuddered again.

  “Well,” Kirsten said breathlessly, “the bad news is that I didn't find anything in the basement, and the even worse news is that it turns out Mary followed us from Middleford Cross. I don't really understand what form she's taking, but she certainly doesn't seem happy and -”

  Suddenly another figure slammed into the top of the grave with a sickening crunch, before dropping down directly on top of Elly. As she slipped out of the way, she saw to her horror that something had thrown Rachel Brown's body into the grave with such force that her neck had been snapped.

  “Great,” Kirsten muttered, reaching down and checking the corpse's neck for a pulse. “I was hoping that Jonathan would be able to learn the truth about his work, but -” The grave shook again, almost knocking her off her feet. She turned to Elly. “What are you doing down here, anyway?”

  “I got a phone call,” Elly stammered, “from... from my mother.”

  “Your mother's dead. Please, cut out the childish rubbish and -”

  “I got a phone call from my mother,” Elly said firmly. “I think she wanted me to look in the grave!”

  “That's ridiculous,” Kirsten replied, “how could -” She stopped suddenly, before looking down at the soil beneath her feet. “It was using your mother's voice,” she said finally. “It was trying to direct us here, it wants to be found.” Dropping to her knees, she began to dig with her bare hands. “Help me!” she shouted. “I was right, Annie did leave a final message, but it wasn't in the grave, it was the grave itself. She must have arranged to be buried directly over the entrance that'll take us down there.”

  “Down where?” Elly asked, taking a step back as the grave shook again. “I'm not going down anywhere with you!”

  “Fine,” Kirsten muttered. “You can stay here and wait for Mary to deal with you. I should warn you, though, she's not in a very good -”

  Stopping suddenly, she pulled more dirt away until she'd uncovered a wooden hatch.

  “This is it,” she said finally, with a hint of awe in her voice. “All that time I was at Lakehurst, I never knew this was here. It's so simple and so beautiful, and somehow Annie worked it out before me. This must be what she wanted to tell me about when she sent me that message.” Scraping more soil away, she finally spotted a small metal handle and pulled on it. After several tugs, she was able to get the hatch open, revealing nothing but darkness beneath with a faint, cold breeze blowing up.


  “What's down there?” Elly asked, with her back against the side of the grave. “What the hell is this?”

  “It's what I've been searching for,” Kirsten replied, grabbing Thomas Lacy and shoving him down through the hatch. “Are you coming with me to see the source of the voice, Elly, or would you rather take your chances up here with Mary? If it affects your decision at all, I should probably mention that she's the ghost of a Nazi scientist who was hanged almost a century ago, and the years haven't exactly made her any more pleasant.”

  “But -”

  “Too late,” Kirsten added, grabbing Elly's damaged ankle and pulling her down, before forcing her head-first through the hole at the bottom of the grave. “I made the decision for you,” she muttered, before swinging her legs over the edge and looking down for a moment. She took a deep breath as the grave shook again. “I've waited so long to get back here,” she said finally, “and now it's finally happening, I'm almost... I'm almost scared.” She paused, before allowing herself a faint smile. “But only almost.”

  Climbing down, she closed the hatch as she went, just as the grave shuddered again and more soil fell down. One of the walls of the grave finally collapsed entirely, bringing tons of dirt down and covering the hatch completely, while a dark figure appeared at the top, looking down. After pausing for a moment, Mary began to climb into the grave and started to frantically dig, desperately trying to get to the hatch.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Are you dead?”

  Silence.

  “Elly? Are you dead?”

  Silence.

  A sigh.

  “Elly,” Kirsten said again, her voice sounding somehow smaller in the cold darkness, “answer me if you can.” She kicked out. “Are you -”

  “Hey!” Elly cried out suddenly, followed by the sound of her pulling away and bumping into the stone wall. She let out a groan of pain. “Where are we?”

  “Deep beneath Lakehurst,” Kirsten replied. “Further down than the basement, that's for sure, although...” She paused, running a hand against the cold wall. “Someone must have been here before us. This space has been hollowed out, maybe it's part of the old copper mine. We fell quite a way, but Mary's going to be coming after us before too long. We need to get moving.”