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She shook her head again. The orderly finally stopped asking questions and they arrived at the girl’s room. Bliss noticed immediately that there was something strange in the air. The feeling of death was all around, a grim darkness just behind the door. She did not feel frightened, only curious. She had lived with the spirit of Lucifer, so she knew what evil felt like. This was not the same. It was not the emerald-sharp feeling of hatred and spite; this was a feeling of dread and sloth, rot and ruin, misery and pain.
There was a small placard next to the door that read PATIENT: FIFTEEN.
“No name. Nomen nescio,” the orderly said proudly, as if Bliss would question his knowledge of Latin. “The doctors thought they’d call her Nina but it didn’t stick. She’s not a Nina. So now we just call her by her room number. Fifteen.”
Bliss peered through the peephole. Inside she saw a young girl perched at the edge of a long flat mattress. Her toes were curled around the bottom and dug into the foam. Her head hung down at an odd angle, swaying slightly as if broken. Her dark hair was shorn to the scalp, and Bliss felt a chill at seeing how skinny she was. Skeletal, with dark bruises on her arms.
The girl looked up straight at Bliss’s eyes through the porthole and Bliss jumped back, startled by the girl’s arresting stare. There was something wrong with the girl’s eyes—Bliss was sure she saw a flash of crimson, but when she looked again, they were just a normal blue.
Just then the orderly unlocked the door. “She’s all yours. Buzz when you’re done.”
“You’re locking me in there…with her?”
“Rules. You signed the waiver.”
Bliss kept her face impassive as the door locked noisily behind her. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. The girl never took her eyes off Bliss. “You’re not scared of me,” she whispered. Her voice was soft and weak.
“Should I be?” asked Bliss.
“They’re all scared of me,” she said softly, picking at the mattress. It was pocked with holes, Bliss saw, and lacked sheets, even a pillow.
“I heard.” Bliss looked around the bare room. There was nothing in the space except for the mattress on the floor. No books, no pictures, not even a window. How long had the girl been living like this? “What’s your name?”
“Fifteen.” Her voice was quiet and subdued, defeated and sad.
“That’s what they call you.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s your real name?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “If I did I wouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you here?” Bliss checked the records. The fire had been only a month earlier, and the girl had been in the hospital since then, with little change or progress in her condition.
“There was a fire,” the girl said. “It burned everything.”
“You were in the house. What happened in that house? What happened to you?” Bliss asked.
The girl put clenched fists to her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“I want to help you,” Bliss said. “Please.”
“No one can help me. Not anymore.”
“Look, I know what you’re going through—I’ve been in a place like this. I was in a mental institution once. I know what it’s like. You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to hide. Let me help you,” Bliss said, fiddling with the charm around her neck that held the Heart of Stone. She had taken to wearing the dark talisman, wanting to keep it close, as if the glittering amulet could draw the hounds to her, help her on her journey. She moved closer to the girl. “I think I know what happened.…I know about the hounds. They’re the ones that attacked you that night, isn’t that right?”
At the mention of the hounds the girl scrambled to the far edge of the room, as far away from Bliss as possible. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave me alone.”
Bliss removed a dusty notebook from her bag and read from it. “‘They will come for us, and when they do, we must be ready. We have protected the house, but will we be able to protect each other?’” She looked up at the girl. “This is your journal, isn’t it? You wrote these words. What does it mean? The hounds were coming for you? But the house was protected somehow? Who are the others? Where are they?”
The girl shrugged.
“What did they want with you? Why did they come? How did you survive?”
“I don’t know. I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the girl said, growing more and more agitated.
“I was hoping you would help me.…I am…looking for them. I need to reach the hounds,” Bliss said, feeling as she uttered the words that it was a hopeless enterprise her mother had set her on.
