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He charged for Isaiah.
Theta grabbed hold of the doctor’s arm. The ghosts inside screeched as the fire burned through the sleeve to his skin. Theta was transfixed by the spectacle. There was something both brutal and beautiful in it. The doctor stared at his own burning flesh, smiling as it spread up his arm. She could see that he wanted to resist, but he was too mesmerized by the flames overtaking him. And then he fell to his knees, screaming in pain as the Forgotten left his burning body.
“Theta! Watch out!” Sam cried.
The Forgotten rushed her. Startled, she threw out her hands. The ghosts writhed in agony as the flames engulfed them. Horrified, Theta stumbled back. She put her still-burning hand against the wall to steady herself. The flame caught on the drapery and spread quickly. It licked up the walls, bubbling the plaster into scorched blisters.
Like Kansas, she thought. Oh, god. Just like Kansas!
But this time, it wasn’t just Roy. There were so many people here.
Isaiah jumped up and rang the fire alarm. “Fire! Fire!” he shouted.
The Forgotten were in retreat. They folded into the fog and slipped out around the windows. The sealed doors opened. Choking black smoke filled the hallway.
“Get them out!” Theta yelled.
Attendants and nurses were running in from the other floors, helping to evacuate the patients and doing their best to smother the fire.
“Theta?” Memphis was looking at her strangely.
Flame still scalloped the tips of her fingers.
Now he knew. They all knew.
The fire had been put out. Now the staff were busy seeing to the patients and trying to understand why one of their own had once again committed an act of violence. In the ensuing chaos, Evie and the others had managed to sneak Luther and Conor with them to the administration building, where they were now crowded in the visiting room again.
Theta wrapped a blanket around a shivering Henry as he told the others first about his ghostly encounter in the graveyard and then, when he felt braver, about life with his mother and her illness.
“Gee, that’s rough. I didn’t know about your ma. I’m sorry, Henry,” Sam said, chagrined. “You know what? Take a punch. Right here.” Sam tapped his jaw.
Henry held up his elegant, piano-playing fingers. “I’m not chancing my bread and butter on your mug, Sam. It’s jake.”
“I’m an ass.”
“Well. That’s true.”
“Why you gotta be so agreeable?” Sam said.
“Depressive,” Evie said, testing the word on her tongue. “I didn’t know there was a name for that feeling. Like there’s a rain cloud in your soul.” She knew that feeling well. Sometimes she was the life of the party. But other times she was lonely, bleak, and sick with disgust at herself, and certain that the people who said they loved her were only pretending. She called these times the “too muches”: too much feeling, like opening a door and seeing, really seeing, into some deep, existential loneliness underlying everything. When the “too muches” arrived, Evie feared that whatever hope lived inside her would drown from the storm of her own aching sadness.
“I suppose I thought no one would understand,” Henry said, picking up a small cast-iron bulldog figurine from the desk. He liked the weight of it in his hands, an anchor to keep him from floating away into the ache that gnawed him when he thought of his mother.
Theta caught Memphis staring at her. Quickly, he looked away, and it registered deep in her gut. Maybe he’d be glad to be rid of her now that he knew what lived inside her.
“When were you gonna tell us?” Ling asked Theta.
“Never, if I coulda had my way.”
“Golly, Theta. All those times we talked, all those nights at the museum. Didn’t you trust us?” Evie asked.
“I knew,” Sam said.
“Sam knew?” Memphis said, and it was hard to miss the hurt in it.
“I knew, too,” Henry said.
“I see,” Memphis said, turning away.
