Page 29 of Dead Vengeance

If I hadn’t been there, Raul would have been dead. These people have no idea how to handle ghosts. And I know Gerald is marching Liam to his death if he sends him anywhere other than… my place.

Gerald’s watching me with his shifty little eyes. He’s got the heart of a gambler, and I can see straight into it. He knows he’s holding all the cards here.

“I don’t want him going off on some other job,” I admit quietly, because he knows it anyway.

His boots squeak on the linoleum floor as he shifts, lifting his chin in early victory. “You just said he has no experience.”

“I know what I said, but—”

“You want me to turn him out on the street, then?”

“The street?” I gasp the words out. What a ridiculous turn of phrase. Or is it? I guess you don’t take a job like this if you have a whole lot of better options. But surely Liam couldn’t have realised how dangerous this would be.

Gerald lets out a flustered, somewhat conciliatory sigh, making me think for a second there might be a touch of humanity behind the grifter. “Look, I doubt he’ll even turn up tomorrow. Kid looks like he’s about to be sick. It’s a high-turnover industry, what can I say?”

And there’s a new concern that settles in my stomach like too much coffee. “You really think he’ll quit?”

He raises both hands in some middling suggestion of weighing the possibility. “If he returns, I’ll try send him your way. If not, I’ll have someone else out there, nine a.m. sharp. Can’t do you better than that, can I?”

The lights wholly stutter now, strobing on and off. Gerald’s head dips like a hunted animal, and he looks so… frightened? He looks actually frightened. “I really have to go.”

I feel bad stopping him again, but I do it anyway, one last time. “Look, please can you give this to Liam, then?”

I fumble in my pocket for my wallet and pull out all the money I have. It’s five-hundred pounds, given to me in exchange for an antique lamp this morning. Just as well I hadn’t taken it out of my coat, because now it’s going to become the severance package I know this guy would never have given Liam. “If he decides to come back, you make that his bonus. Tell him it’s from you. If not, and he decides to leave, tell him it’s a tip from me.”

Gerald eyes the money for a beat, then snatches it up and shoves it deep in his coat pocket. “I’ll let you know.” Then he slinks off down the hall, disappearing when the light goes out again, gone completely by the time it comes back on.

Then it’s out.

I give it a moment, expecting it to switch back on, or expecting them to have some kind of back-up system kick in. This is a hospital after all, and they have life-saving medical equipment that can’t stop working.

Surely, they have a back-up system.

But it doesn’t come on.

And I wait.

And it doesn’t come on.

So I grab my phone to use the torch, and when my screen flickers then dies, that’s when I realise.

This isn’t a blackout. This isn’t a normal electrical fault.

This is something wrong.

Something supernatural.

I know it’s not a ghost because I can sense them. I can see them and talk to them. There are a couple down the end of the hall chatting right now. Or they were. Because suddenly they’re looking around, just as nervous as I’m starting to feel.

And when a ghost is scared, you know it’s trouble.

A horrified scream breaks from the emergency room.

And I run.

eleven

Horror Hospital