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I tooka deep breath and looked up to the sky, as if I expected some kind of portent. As if I would find someone looking through the eyeglasses down at them. The object distorted luck; if you wanted something, it would bring it to you, by bending all sorts of unconnected incidents. Thing was, I was not in control of the object.
The whole setup was still bothering me.
If the clues I was following could be manufactured, who was doing it? And what did they have in mind? Benevolence or malevolence?
Was someone looking for me? Some sentient nightmare thing like Harry?
Why were they leading me to the SK?
If it were a trap, would I feel the jaws closing?
I swallowed just as Val bumped me.
Brushing passed, he pushed open the double doors of the old hospital. “Welcome to the house of fun.”
Leaves were everywhere. On the floor, on the rotted-away desks and chairs, on the piles of books in the back offices. I stepped carefully not to crush the pretty brown leaves, or tread on the saw-toothed knife that was almost welded to the concrete with rust. Had they had concrete during Civil War times? The hospital might’ve been modernized since then.
We continued through into the wards, of which there seemed to be four. Past those was the operating theater. The steel tables were rusting away in situ but minus the leaves, apart from a few that’d blown down the corridors. Instruments had been left in cupboards and on shelves. An old refrigerator confirmed this place had operated well into the dawning of the electrical age. The open door revealed the fridge’s innards, which seemed sacrilege—like gutting a rabbit and leaving its carcass for all to see.
Poor fridge.
“Nothing?” Val looked to me.
I shook my head.
Disappointment coated my tongue. I swallowed past the lump in my throat—I wasn’t ready to give in.
“Still one more section.” I pointed deeper into the hospital as I stepped over some forceps on the floor. Why had they left these instruments to ruin? A museum would love them.
“You sure you want to go back there? It’s probably the morgue.”
I’d halted where steps led into darkness then peered into the gloom “The morgue?”
“Yeah, they’d want to keep things cold and being below ground would help. So...” He hesitated, and I guessed he was thinking it was also the best place for monsters. “You think your clue is down there?”
“Could be.” I sucked on my cheek, pulled out a flashlight and turned it on. “I’m not giving up until we’ve searched every room.”
I took one step down the empty stairwell and marveled at the echo. So quiet in here, not even a sparrow.
Something wicked this way comes.
Val’s boots crunched behind me. “You might not find anything. There’s no logic to this.”
“The eyeglasses aren’t logical.”
“Okay. So the object jumps the logical path. That doesn’t make every illogical idea correct.”
Damn. I almost winced. He’d unpicked the thread that was most vulnerable. I dearly wanted this to be true. Maybe I was seeing things that weren’t there.
Delusions.
I shuddered.
The idea that I could be so misguided confronted me more than the possibility that this might be the end of my trail. Closure was a funny thing, and I’d gotten some when we’d found Yvaine’s remains. A lifetime ago.
Fights with monsters ago.
Walking through dreams ago.
