Page 98 of The Devil and His Ghost

I took in a sharp breath and froze with an icy realization.

Silence.

The rain, the wind, the thunder. It had all stopped. It was suddenly so quiet that I could hear my own breathing as I stared wide-eyed at the endless stretch of blank wall.

Whispers broke through the stillness. Slowly, I turned. My stomach twisted sickeningly. I no longer stood near the front door but at the end of the doctor’s hallway near the elevator. A single fluorescent white light lit the eerily dark space. The numerous doors lined the long stretch, and peering out from the crack of each door was a pair of glowing white eyes, all locked on me. The whispers streamed out from behind those cracks, yet the quickly spoken words were too low for me to make out.

That wasn’t nearly as horrifying as the familiar faces standing in the stretches of space between each door against the wall. Ghosts I recognized from the rooftop lined the hallway, yet they weren’t as they had been then.

The nurse was covered in blood, which dripped down her inner legs and stained her hands. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and those wide, white eyes peered at the ceiling while she screamed and clawed at her own throat to shred it into flimsy, bloody pieces.

The teen boy I’d briefly met in the children’s ward stood across from her in his knee-length hospital gown, but unlike before, an oronasal mask now covered his face. The long tube hung and disappeared into the ground, and he twitched violently in place as he panicked in an effort to get the device off with arms that wouldn’t move.

More ghosts just like them lined the length of hallway, screaming and thrashing as they mutilated themselves or endured some terrible invisible torture. I wanted to run to them and offer some sort of freedom from whatever was happening, but before I could start toward them, a new panic filled me.

The director’s door at the end of the hall slowly opened. An invisible force had rooted me to the spot so that all I could do was watch in horror as the door opened wide, revealing nothing but darkness within. I strained to see past that black doorway, to fight to see what lurked in those depths.

I heard it before I saw anything.

Laughter.

Bone-chilling male laughter straight from my most horrid nightmares. A hand slowly emerged from the darkness and offered itself to me, palm up. A disembodied voice that carried the sound of malicious mirth echoed from that space.

“Come here, Princess.”

I wanted to scream along with the phantoms stationed in the hall. I wanted to run in the opposite direction, but it was like I’d lost control of my body. Every limb was locked in place while my voice was held captive within my throat.

New sounds filtered out of that shadowy doorway, sounds that made me want to cover my ears and claw at them so they’d never hear anything ever again. I fought against the invisible hold on me, now thrashing wildly, savagely, on the inside.

The ghosts abruptly stopped their screaming and violent movements. Their heads whipped in my direction so that all of their undead eyes locked right on me. A low ding rang out behind me, and the sound quieted all others. The thump of the elevator docking behind me wasn’t one of rejoice with an offer of escaping this scene. The arrival of the elevator made ice roll down my back and a tremor start up in my limbs.

The doors rolled open behind me, and from within the elevator, I could feel someone staring at me. I could feel the presence of something wicked licking at my heels like shadows slowly wrapping around my feet. I fully expected to be yanked backward and dragged into the elevator.

But seconds ticked by.

Silent, still, agonizing seconds where I wanted to look to see what stood behind me but couldn’t.

Seconds where my gaze was forced to stare ahead at that still open, dark doorway.

A bony white hand abruptly wrapped around the bottom of the director’s open doorway. That face with its too wide stare and lips pulled up to reach the corners of its eyes poked out from around the side. Our gazes locked for a beat.

All at once, it leapt out of the dark. It darted toward me on hands and feet that were warped, elbows and knees bent at odd angles. A guttural screech pierced the air from her cracked lips as she raced in my direction.

Adrenaline surged, and somehow, I managed to scream while my eyes slammed closed. A force hit me in my chest, sending me smacking backward into the elevator. I crumbled onto my stomach as my head spun from the impact, and my glasses fell somewhere near me. Hands grabbed at my arms as though to help me up. I instinctively tried to flinch away, but when I looked up, I found Maria kneeling beside me with a worried frown.

“Saved you,” she fretted with a relieved sigh. “Call for him. Hurry.”

I stared at her troubled expression, which kept glancing between my face and the elevator we were sprawled in. She knew something about what was happening, and while I wanted to ask her, I also didn’t want to be here alone.

“X-Xander!” I cried out hoarsely.

Within the next instant, the demon appeared in nothing more than sweatpants. His golden eyes were wide, and his face was abnormally pale. When he caught sight of me, his knees buckled, and he collapsed next to me before yanking me into his tight embrace with one clawed hand holding the back of my head and the other secured around my waist.

“Fuck! I couldn’t find you,” he shuddered. His hold tightened. “I coudn’t fucking find you.”

I didn’t hesitate to wrap my arms around him, burying my face in his neck. “I don’t know what happened.”

Maria gasped. I barely turned in time to catch sight of her face contorting in pain before she was yanked by some unseen force through the elevator floor.