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On a terrifying hiss, the little girl opened her eel-shine mouth wide as a snake’s. She had a lot of teeth.
“I really hate the t-teeth,” Henry said.
The ghosts’ feet hovered just above the sopping ground. Their voices swirled in the night air. “We are the Forgotten. You have forgotten us. Forgotten us. Forgotten. We are the Forgotten. We will live inside you and you will not forget us again.”
“Wait. Wait!” Henry yelled. “Y-you don’t want to hurt me!”
The ghosts stopped their advance. They seemed to have heard him.
Like a dream, Henry thought. Pretend this is a dream.
“You don’t want to hurt me,” he said again, using the same persuasive voice he’d used in his dream walks to stop a nightmare in its tracks. “You don’t want to hurt me.” He backed carefully toward the asylum.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” they said.
“That’s right.” He lifted his foot carefully over a pallid hand working its way up from the earth, stifling a scream as he did. The lights of the asylum were getting closer. Step by step. It was working.
The ghosts began to follow Henry, like terrifying pets.
“You don’t want to follow me, either,” Henry insisted.
“We are the Forgotten, forgotten no more.”
“Stay,” Henry said. He felt ridiculous, but the ghosts hovered above the broken graves and did not follow. “Good ghosts,” Henry said. “Very good.”
He stepped over the last grave, and every bit of his calm evaporated. With a loud yell, he stumble-ran the rest of the way toward the asylum. His screams were so loud he could barely hear the Forgotten screeching after him: “Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!”
He rounded the corner of the asylum, nearly hitting Evie, Sam, and Conor head-on.
“Henry!” Evie said, embracing him. “Oh, you’re all right.”
“Where’s everybody else?” he gasped.
“Don’t know,” Sam said.
The growling was getting closer.
“No time for a tearful reunion,” Henry gasped. “Just keep running!”
Theta and Isaiah burst out of the stairwell, and Theta dragged a bench in front of the door, as if that would do anything, but it made her feel better. She unwrapped her ruined coat and dropped it to the floor, and the two of them sagged against the opposite wall, gasping for breath.
“You… okay?” She panted out, and a wide-eyed Isaiah nodded.
The door to the stairwell slammed against the bench. The possessed doctor grunted as he pressed his shoulder against the jammed door, and then he swung the ax through the narrow opening, bringing it down on the bench’s back, splintering it.
“Polly Pratchet had a hatchet, worked it night and day!”
“Not you again,” Theta said on a ragged breath.
“Theta!” Memphis called from the other end of the hallway. Ling was with him. There were running footsteps and more shouts—“Memphis?” “Ling!” Henry’s voice. And Evie’s. They were with Sam, and for just a second, Theta was so relieved to see all of her friends that she forgot about the doctor with the ax. The door to the stairwell flew open with superhuman strength, sending the bench skittering across the floor toward Theta and Isaiah.
The doctor lunged at them, ax held high. He brought it down again, and Theta and Isaiah jumped forward, narrowly missing its sharp blade as it sliced into the wall. The doctor laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world. With a grunt, he freed the ax. “That’ll leave a mark. I always wanted to leave a mark. But people were always questioning me. Let’s see what sort of mark I can leave on you!”
He came at them, grimly determined, eyes shining but dead. There was no time to think. A scream tore out of Theta’s throat as the heat roared through her. Blue-orange flames raced from her fingertips to her shoulders. Her arms were like the brilliant wings of a firebird.
“Stay back,” she warned.
“We are the Forgotten,” the doctor said in a splintered voice. “We will not be forgotten. He has promised. The child. The child. The child.”
