Page 118 of The Devil and His Ghost

I SAT BY THE WINDOW of the common room in Ward E. Xander leaned against the wall and had me tucked between his legs, and he ran his fingers through my hair, content to let me read in peace. I rested happily against his chest while reading through Maria Hernandez-Gonzalez’s chart. I’d picked up where I left off before Xander distracted me. A whole day had passed since then, because we’d spent it sleeping.

I was finally catching up on my work, and Xander was apparently waiting on Coldin to join us here. Something about today being pay day. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was too busy to care.

The pages about all the tests, medications, and “therapy” that Maria was subjected to still disgusted me. I was excited when I finally reached new material.

At first, I thought it was a piece of paper that had been placed inside the wrong chart by mistake. After all, it was a very childlike drawing. I wasn’t trying to shame this thirty-seven year old psych patient on her artistic abilities, but this drawing truly held the touch of a child with its crude and jagged attempts at a smiling girl with a blob that I figured out after much staring was meant to be a cat. The only evidence supporting the theory that it was a feline came from the pointy ears, whiskers, long tail, and a collar with a hard to read name tag. The name Maria was scribbled at the bottom in large letters with no capitals.

More drawings followed. Some had the same messy signature and child-like quality while others were drawn wildly with only black crayon. Those images made little sense to me. One page just had black angrily scribbled across the entire page. Another was littered with hand-written words, but they had been covered with that same black crayon. I managed to decipher a few of them, though, such as “hate” and “kill.” The bouncing between dark, enraged scribblings and childlike, colored pictures made my head spin.

A happy girl chasing a balloon that was being pulled by someone off the page.

A continuation of seemingly that same scene. Drawn in black, a man wearing a cross held the other end of the string and looked back off page.

A colorful picture of a girl holding hands with six other people, one of whom looked less human and more monstrous.

A dark drawing of a woman with overly wide black eyes and a gaping mouth that dripped black ink.

I froze, and my heart rate sped up. I sat up straighter and reviewed the drawings and many notes again as puzzle pieces began to come together. Squinting at the name on the cat drawing’s name tag, I thought I might throw up.

“Xander,” I called to the demon sitting behind me. “Have you seen little Maria this morning?”

“Huh? No. I’ve been with you.”

My mind raced as I leapt up and sat the folder down. “Will you help me find her?”

Xander quirked a curious brow at me but stood obediently. “What’s going on?”

I shook my head while starting toward the exit of the ward. “I could be way off, so I don’t want to say yet. Let’s find Maria first.”

Xander seemed lost, but he trailed alongside me to meet my request. We started at the top of the building and worked our way down, calling out for the child we’d gotten to know. I was a little bewildered, but there were too many things that fit together too well.

The same name. The same interest in balloons. The multiple personalities. The drawing of a cat named Scooter.

What if little Maria was Maria Hernandez-Gonzalez? What if the woman’s spirit was able to take the form of each of her personalities? One of her seven identities was a little girl, but … so was “The Evil One.”

A near skeletal being with long dark hair, too big black eyes, a gaping stretched smile. “The Evil One” and the Monster of Mountview were undoubtedly one in the same, but it was more than just that shaking me up.

What if little Maria and that creature weren’t separate ghosts at all but the same spirit in different forms?

“I’ve gotta be wrong,” I mumbled shakily as Xander and I tore through the second floor in search of the ghost.

My mind went back to the night when the Monster of Mountview nearly attacked me, only for little Maria to appear right when that creature should’ve slammed into me. The abrupt disappearance of the monster with the appearance of Maria made sense if they were the same. Now that I thought about it from this lens, it was seeming more likely that she’d simply switched forms at the last second.

“Why would one version attack me while the other protected me?” I asked myself under my breath.

I barrelled down the stairs for the first floor with Xander right on my heels. We both called out for Maria again.

“Kendyll?”

Xander and I stopped in our tracks and shared a successful look. We turned toward the sound of little Maria’s confused voice. I was a bit ahead of Xander, so I rounded the corner that led to all of the doctor’s offices first and found the little ghost girl crouched in the middle of the dimly lit hallway. The vision of her squatting in the mostly dark area made me freeze, and trepidation made a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck. I slowly looked behind me, only to find Xander had disappeared. The hallway entrance had closed so that only the long stretch of office doorways and the elevator remained.

My hunch was correct.

When I looked back at Maria, she stared warily at me. I worked to catch my breath and slowly moved toward her as though she were an animal I didn’t want to frighten away.

Swallowing hard, I asked, “Why can’t Xander join us?”

Her thumbs fiddled nervously in front of her bent knees. “It’s not me.”