Meds Read online

  She fumbled in the darkness for a moment.

  “Give me your phone,” she added finally.

  “What?”

  “Do you have your phone with you?”

  “Yes, but -”

  “Give it to me.”

  Reaching into her pocket, Elly took out her phone and tapped the screen, finally bringing a hint of light to the small tunnel. A moment later, Kirsten snatched the phone away and shone it toward the distance.

  Looking down, Elly saw Thomas Lacy's crumpled body nearby. Reaching over, she felt for a pulse and found that against all the odds, the old man's heart was still beating.

  “It's down here,” Kirsten said, crawling past them and making her way along the tunnel, using Elly's phone to light the way. “We're getting closer, I can feel it.”

  “Wait!” Elly called after her, as the phone's light got further and further away. “Stop, this is madness! We have to find a way back up, I can't...” She paused, realizing that the air seemed thinner. “I don't think I can breathe,” she stammered, starting to panic. “There's no air down here!”

  “There's plenty of air,” Kirsten replied dismissively, still crawling along the tunnel. “Pull yourself together and bring Mr. Lacy with you, I still need him.”

  “Wait!”

  “I don't have time for this. Bring him!”

  Taking a deep breath, Elly forced herself to stay at least somewhat calm. Turning, she looked down at Thomas Lacy before realizing that she had no choice. “I'm sorry about this,” she muttered, taking hold of his collar and starting to drag him along as she hurried after Kirsten. “If you can hear me, it's not my fault that we're down here. I'm just a nurse, I don't know how I ended up in this mess.”

  Above, the roof of the tunnel shuddered slightly.

  “That'll be Mary!” Kirsten called out from up ahead. “I'd rather stay well ahead of her. I don't exactly know what to do if she catches up to us, and I doubt you've got any ideas.”

  “You said she's a Nazi,” Elly replied, already a little out of breath as she struggled to pull Lacy along. “You didn't mean that, did you? I mean, I met her, she didn't seem like a Nazi.”

  “She was Rudolf Langheim's wife,” Kirsten continued. “I read about her, she was a key figure in the Nazi party's investigations into occult practices. She was executed after the war but somehow she managed to keep her spirit around, and she's much stronger than most ghosts. Eventually she showed up at Middleford Cross to track down Annie and find out what she knew about the force that's resting beneath Lakehurst. I have no idea what happened next, but Annie ended up dead, the hospital ended up burning, and Mary ended up desperately trying to track down Annie's body. Fortunately, I managed to get to it first, if only by a few hours, and then -”

  She stopped suddenly.

  “And then what?” Elly asked, gasping as she pulled Lacy further. “What's wrong? What are you -”

  “Stop,” Kirsten said suddenly, reaching back and putting a hand against Elly's chest to keep her from going any further. “We've reached a problem, although I suppose it's more of an opportunity. A very big, very deep opportunity that would have killed us if we'd gone any further.” Holding the phone out, she tilted its screen to show that the tunnel had ended in a vast, sudden hole that dropped down into the darkness below. “I think it might require a literal leap of faith to go any further.”

  Creeping forward, Elly looked down into the depths and felt, for a moment, as if something was staring back up at her.

  “Do you hear it?” Kirsten asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “You know what. The voice.”

  “I...” Pausing for a moment, Elly realized the only thing she could hear was her own heart, pounding in her chest. Just as she was about to say as much, however, she felt a faint whisper at the edge of her mind, as if something was reaching up from the depths and tugging on loose thoughts that hung like strands. The presence was not so much a voice, and more a kind of idea, whispering through her consciousness. It was the same voice she'd heard all those years ago when she was a little girl, the same voice that -

  Suddenly she let out a cry of pain as she felt something slamming down onto her hand. Pulling back, she realized that Kirsten had used a small rock to crush the index finger of her right hand, and as the pain began to pulse and throb she could tell that the bone was fractured.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” she stammered.

  “I just saved you from getting your mind burned out.”

  Holding her finger up, Elly could see in the low light that there was already a dark bruise. When she tried to move the finger, she had no luck. “I think you broke it!”

  “The only thing that blocks the voice out,” Kirsten continued, “is pain. I could see it in your eyes, you were already starting to feel the voice entering your head. This close to the source, you'd never have survived.” She looked back down into the darkness. “The voice destroys any unprotected mind that it encounters, and at such a close range the process would have been quick.”

  “Fine,” Elly muttered, “so now do I get to break one of your fingers?”

  “No need. I'm already in quite enough pain as it is.” She turned and smiled. “What's wrong, couldn't you tell? Trust me, even after several years, the lingering effects of a brain transplant can leave certain artifacts in the human body.” She turned and grabbed Thomas Lacy's unconscious body, hauling him closer to the edge. “Fortunately, I brought an interface.”

  “An interface?” Elly asked.

  “The voice will talk to us through Lacy,” she explained. “That's the theory, anyway. Lacy was here at Lakehurst half a century ago, he's been losing his mind slowly ever since then. The voice pushed him to kill all those people.” Slapping the side of Lacy's face, she waited a moment before slapping him again. “Come on, old man. You're finally going to be useful!”

  Behind them, far back in the tunnel, there was a faint shudder.

  “We don't have much time,” Kirsten continued, shaking Lacy's shoulders. “Mary won't be quite so understanding if she catches up to us. Come on, Mr. Lacy, wake up. This isn't a good time for a nap.”

  This time, when she slapped him again, he let out a gasp of pain and pulled back. His eyes open and he looked around, clearly shocked.

  “There's no time to explain properly,” Kirsten told him. “Remember the voice you started hearing when you first came to Lakehurst?” She forced him to look down into the pit. “Whatever it truly is, the source is down there. I know it's already entering your mind, it has to be, so I want you to tell it that the party days are over. Tell it that I want to discuss ways for us to cooperate.”

  “Are you insane?” Elly hissed, leaning over the edge and looking down into the darkness. “If there's anything down there at all, we have to get out of here!”

  “I want to know what it is,” Kirsten whispered, staring down into the pit. “I need to know. This thing has been in my head for years. It's time to see its face.”

  “I don't...” Lacy gasped. “I don't know what you're talking about! What am I doing here?”

  “Translating,” Kirsten said firmly. “Come on, old man, I know there's enough of you left to get this job done. Talk back to it, tell it I'm here, tell it the time for games is over. I'm sure it remembers me from the days when there was an asylum here.” She paused, watching his terrified face, before grabbing his collar and shoving him forward with such force that he almost tipped over the edge. “Tell it!” she shouted.

  “Please,” he whimpered, as tears fell from his eyes, “I don't know what -”

  His voice stopped suddenly.

  “What do you hear?” Kirsten asked, leaning closer to him. “Tell me!”

  “I...” He paused, before slowly turning to her. The fear was gone from his eyes, and his body was no longer trembling.

  “I hear something,” Elly said, looking back along the tunnel. “I think Mary's getting closer.”

  “What is it telling y
ou?” Kirsten continued, still focused solely on Lacy's face. “Tell me what it's saying to you, old man!” She paused, waiting for him to answer. “Tell me!” she shouted. “Tell me or I swear I'll throw you over the edge!”

  Slowly, Lacy began to smile. At the same time, the skin around his neck and jaw was starting to blister and redden.

  “What's happening?” Kirsten asked. “Come on, old man, talk to me before -”

  “He is gone,” Lacy said suddenly, his voice sounding firmer and more defiant than at any point since his arrival at Middleford Cross. Even the effects of his stroke, which had left one side of his face paralyzed and his voice permanently slurred, had somehow faded away. “His consciousness was the first thing to burn out,” he continued, “it took only milliseconds when I entered his mind a moment ago. Now his body will follow suit, these human forms can't survive more than a short time with my soul inside.” As he spoke, the blisters began to spread across his face, as if his body was slowly cooking from the inside. “I choose to speak to you directly, reaching up through this body, rather than passing on messages like a fool.”

  “Who am I talking to?” Kirsten asked, trying to disguise the fear in her voice. “What am I talking to?”

  “Why don't you come down and find out?”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Come and find out,” he said again, with a smile.

  Turning, she looked down into the pit for a moment.

  “I'm waiting at the bottom,” Lacy continued. “I've been waiting for a long, long time, but all the people who got close to me... Let us just say that I was not very impressed by the specimens. Even when this land was teeming with life, I was able to reach up and listen to their thoughts, but none of them were worthy. There was one, though, one who was here briefly and then left, and now you have returned.”

  “Me?” Kirsten whispered. “You're talking about me?”

  “The pain in your mind is a fine balance,” he told her, as his skin began to sear. The heat was building, causing his eyes to harden and become more milky until finally small ripples appeared on the whites, allowing clear liquid to dribble out at the edges of his pupils. “It does not shame me to admit that I am still learning. This new form of awareness brings certain complications that I have yet to fully overcome. I believe you might be able to accelerate the process.”

  “New awareness?” Kirsten paused, frantically trying to remember the papers she'd read in Langheim's archive. “Evil. That's what you are, isn't it? You're pure, unadulterated evil. Langheim was right, evil exists in the world in some measurable form, and a big clump of it got wedged somehow under Lakehurst, probably long before the main building arrived.” She watched for a moment as Lacy's face began to char and sizzle, burning away the moisture in his skin. “And in some freakish way,” she continued, “once this clump of evil was stuck here, it began to develop a mind.”

  “A soul,” Lacy croaked, barely able to get the words out as he grinned, baring white teeth that stood out against his blackening skin. “I have a soul. I learned that word from you. And I watched the men who came down here many years ago, and I copied them. I decided to start thinking.”

  “The miners,” Kirsten replied. “It's all just a horrible series of coincidences that led to you developing a mind.”

  “I wanted to be like them,” he said, his voice slurring once again as the heat began to tear his body apart. “I saw life and I wanted some for myself!”

  “What's happening to him?” Elly asked, backing away. “It looks like he's burning from the inside!”

  “More or less,” Kirsten whispered, still staring at Lacy. Reaching out, she tried to put a hand on the side of his face, but the heat forced her back.

  “This body...” he gasped, “is... almost... beyond use. If you wish to speak to me... again...” He fell forward as flames began to flicker across his skin. “You know... where... I...”

  He paused, before letting out a final gasp as his body burst into flames and tipped over the edge, dropping down the pit. Kirsten and Elly both looked down, watching as the burning corpse tumbled into the darkness and finally disappeared from view.

  “It must be pretty deep,” Kirsten muttered, as the tunnel shook. She turned and looked back the way they'd come. “I have to get down there before Mary arrives.”

  “Get down there?” Elly replied, shocked by the idea. “You can't be serious! Whatever this is -”

  “Shut up!” Kirsten snapped, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her against the side of the tunnel. “Just shut up and listen to me! I didn't come this far only to turn back when I'm on the edge of seeing its face! This voice has been tormenting me all my life and I'm damn well going down there!” She paused for a moment, a little out of breath. “I have the pain,” she continued finally. “That's my shield, it'll keep the voice out of my head so I don't burn up like Thomas Clay Lacy. Whatever's down there, it'll have to find another way to communicate with me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the device that Doctor Carmichael had been working on. “I also have this, it's the whole reason I entertained his miserable presence at the hospital in the first place. Pain means control, and if I'm right, I can use this to cause so much pain to the voice that I'll be able to make it listen to me, I might even be able to control it.”

  “If you go down there,” Elly said firmly, as the tunnel shuddered again, “you'll die.”

  “And if I stay up here, I'll live without ever knowing the truth.” She paused. “I'd rather die with my eyes wide open, with this unknowable knowledge leeching into my head, even if it's only for a fraction of a millisecond before death claims me. To know all that there is to know about this thing, for just a sliver of time, is worth more to me than a lifetime of ignorance. And anyway, there's always the chance that my plan might work out, that I might be able to talk to the voice, maybe even tame it. After all, I've already pulled off some pretty unlikely stunts. I have a talent for organization.” Pushing Elly back, she swung her legs over the side of the pit and stared down into the darkness.

  “Please,” Elly stammered, grabbing Kirsten's arm, “don't do this.”

  “It's waking up,” Kirsten explained, staring down as she felt the voice trying and failing to penetrate her mind. “It wants to break free. You won't have long to get to the surface, Elly, but you have to try. If I die down there, this thing, whatever it is, will come after you. If I succeed, if I manage to control it somehow, then you'll have time to get away. People will probably have a few questions, you can tell them the truth but they won't believe you. Just muddle through the best you can.” She paused. “The one regret I have is that Annie Radford didn't live to join me in this moment. I think she would have appreciated what's about to happen.”

  “Kirsten -”

  “See you around.”

  “Kirsten!”

  Before she could react, Elly watched in horror as Kirsten slipped free and let herself fall forward into the pit. She reached out to grab her again, but her hand missed by just a couple of inches and all she could do was stare in horror as Kirsten's body tumbled down into the darkness, disappearing quickly from sight. She waited, but after a few seconds Elly realized that the pit was too deep, that she'd never hear the body hitting the bottom. After a moment, she realized the tunnel was shaking more than ever. Since she had no way to help Kirsten, she turned and began to crawl back, desperately trying to get to the hatch.

  “Where is she?” a voice screamed up ahead.

  Stopping, Elly saw to her horror that a shape was moving closer, crawling along the tunnel. Raising her phone and tilting the screen, she realized that Mary had finally managed to catch them. Burned and skeletal, Mary slammed into Elly and pushed her out of the way before continuing along the tunnel. Elly turned, shocked, and used her phone to watch as Mary reached the edge of the pit and threw herself forward, tumbling down after Kirsten and letting out a loud, angry scream in the process.

  A moment later, the tunnel shook and part of t
he roof fell down, covering Elly in dirt. Turning, she began to crawl toward the hatch, and although more dirt began to drop down onto her, she eventually managed to get back to the start of the tunnel. Pushing the hatch open, she clambered up into the half-filled grave and held her breath as she struggled to get free. Desperate for air, she tried to breathe but felt more soil entering her mouth. For a few frantic seconds, she felt as if she might never get free, but finally she was able to grab hold of a rock and haul herself up, gasping for air as she climbed out of the grave and fell onto the lawn.

  The ground was still shaking, and after a moment she looked around at the dark scene, seeing no more ghosts. Realizing that something seemed different, however, she took a couple of steps forward before seeing that the area where the ruins of Lakehurst once stood was now a vast pit, with the ground have been swallowed deep below. She watched in horror as the ambulance tumbled down and vanished into the darkness, and when she turned and tried to run she found that the ground was shaking too much. Falling, she landed hard and dug her fingers into the soil, trying desperately to hang on even as she felt the ground beneath her body being pulled down. She closed her eyes and screamed, waiting for the inevitable moment when she too would tumble down into the depths. From somewhere far below, there was a deep, booming groan, as if something was waking. The groan became louder still, until Elly felt as if the pain in her ears was about to split her head open.

  And then it stopped.

  Silence fell, and the ground no longer shook.

  Opening her eyes, she turned and saw that she was just a few feet from the edge of the vast hole that had opened up in the ground, but whatever had been happening far below, it seemed to have stopped now. Getting to her feet, she brushed soil from her front as she took a couple of steps forward. When she reached the edge of the pit, she looked down into the gaping darkness that ran too deep for even moonlight to penetrate. All she could think about was Kirsten Winter, and what had happened to her after she threw herself into the depths, and whether she'd finally found what she'd been looking for.