Page 102 of The Devil and His Ghost

Kendyll’s green eyes searched mine for a beat before she turned away and swallowed hard. She revealed quietly, “She reminds me of myself.”

I went rigid with unwanted understanding.

Kendyll pushed her glasses up her nose and continued, “She’s just a little girl who’s been abandoned. Forgotten. The way she acts, I can’t help but wonder what horrors she’s seen or been through.” Kendyll’s eyes closed, and her head hung. “If they’re anything like mine.”

Comparing the ghost child to little Kendyll made it harder to view the phantom as anything more than just that—a scared child who wanted to be loved, believed. Kendyll wanted to do for Maria what she wished someone had done for her, and that knocked the frustration and unease right out of me.

Releasing a silent sigh, I stood next to her and studied the numbered buttons with her. Maria had said there was a secret button with a way down, but she’d failed to mention how to find it. I ran my fingertips along the sleek metal in search of something, anything, that felt out of place.

“If I was a hidden button, how would you find me? I don’t see a place for a key,” Kendyll pondered. She poked the number one on the panel while nibbling her lip. “Maybe there’s a secret code?”

Hearing the suggestion made me recall the weird set of numbers I’d found in the small compartment in the director’s office bookshelves. The seemingly random numbers that someone wanted hidden away may’ve been a key to a more nefarious area of the hospital right beneath our feet. I had no idea if that was the case, but there was no harm in trying it out. I pumped power into the elevator to turn it on before punching in the string of numbers.

331524

With a dull click, a lid popped open from where it blended into the natural frame work of the real panel. Beneath it was a single, solid black button. I didn’t look at Kendyll as I reached out to push it. I worried our eye-contact would make my earlier hesitations return, and I didn’t want to make this difficult for her.

“Wait here, boy,” I ordered Catsper, who still lingered in the hallway.

The elevator doors rattled closed. The cart gave a light bounce before beginning its slow descent. I reached out to hold Kendyll’s hand tightly, and thankfully, she let me pull her into my side without complaint. I understood why she wanted to see what was down here and why she trusted Maria, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be on guard and protect her at all costs.

The air grew colder the deeper we went, and the demonic energy I’d been unable to sense all this time suddenly hit me with a blast of hot sulfuric air. It was like I stood on the precipice of an active volcano that was seconds from erupting with a deadly explosion. I tightened my hold on Kendyll.

“If anything goes wrong down there, we’re leaving,” I told her firmly. “No arguments.”

“Fine,” she agreed, her brow slamming down as she glanced apprehensively around us.

“Can you feel it, too?”

She glanced up at me before nodding. “There’s a very heavy and oppressive feeling down here. I’ve … never felt this before.”

“Because you’ve never met a demon like him before. I told you. This guy’s power is no joke.”

The elevator finally stopped. Fuck. Had we gone down three stories? I wasn’t sure how deep beneath the building we really were, but that curiosity vanished the minute the doors creaked open. I stopped channeling power into the buggy as Kendyll and I stepped out into an expansive corridor. Mildew and aged dust coated the air with signs of its longtime disuse. It was so dark, a human wouldn’t be able to see their own hand before their face, let alone anything else down here. So even though I could see through the blackness, I lit a flame within my palm and cast it out so that dozens of balls of light hovered down the stretch of hallway.

A new wave of energy hit me, and Kendyll must’ve felt it, too. She paused midstep and gasped, “Holy shit. There are a lot of ghosts down here.”

That fact only made me more anxious since I knew the souls we were feeling all belonged to one Mischief demon. His power had to be insane if he had all of their collected energy funneling into him.

Strong enough to break weaker demons. Strong enough to break bonds he wanted for himself. Strong enough to kill …

I squeezed Kendyll’s hand lightly. “Don’t stray from my side, okay? Not while down here.”

We moved through the old area, which was more like an underground concrete structure than a part of the hospital above. There were numerous doorways and other hallways branching off of this main corridor, and we peeked into as many as we could.

The first hallway was nothing but long empty cells. Each room was cramped, dark, and only old, discolored blankets remained within them. The smell of blood, urine, and human bodily odors still lingered in the air.

“What kind of place was this?” Kendyll whispered with a horrified look into an empty cell that was still locked.

My Hellfire drifted closer, and the orange flames illuminated a lump of blankets on the ground.

A lump of blankets with a skeletal arm stretched out from under them.

“Oh my god,” Kendyll cried in horror. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth, and she quickly turned away to stare at my chest with wide eyes. “Is that really a body in there?”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder to tug her closer to me, but I didn’t take my eyes off the long-dead corpse under the soiled blanket. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything good down here.”

I guided Kendyll away from the hallway of prison-like cells that had no business being connected to a psych hospital. The next series of rooms we reached painted more of a dark picture. They were surgical rooms containing tables, beds, and chairs, all of which had straps to contain their occupants. Blood caked numerous surfaces. There were some archaic devices like electroshock therapy machines or lobotomy tools.