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“Just because I didn’t sleep with him,” I repeated to myself, ignoring him, “doesn’t mean the date didn’t work out. I’m seeing him again next week. And probably again after that.”
OK, I wasn’t sure about that, but I had to say it anyway. It was worth it to see the flinch across his brow, creating momentary broodiness. He was shocked, if only for a moment. Shocked and speechless. And the upper hand was mine.
“Yeah,” I added. “So, again, shut up.”
He chewed on that for a few beats more. Then he said, “That’s…good. I guess you deserve to have some fun too.”
“Yeah,” I said sternly. I attempted to stare him down, which was hard to do when his eyes were on the rainy, dark road ahead. “I do. I deserve to have a lot of fun.”
I wanted to add in an extra bit about taking Rebecca up on her offer about Bradley since Dex seemed to have such a problem with that idea, but I decided that would probably make me look like too much of a slut.
Things were a tad awkward, so I reached for his iPod and started scanning through his gigantic playlist, looking for anything other than The Beatles.
“Wait, what are you putting on? You can’t turn off The Beatles.”
“We’re in Seattle. It’s dark and rainy and I’m pissed off. Can’t we listen to Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, Melvins, anything local?”
“Why are you pissed off?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned and surprised. Sometimes I wondered if Dex actually had any recollection of 90% of the conversations he was involved with.
I sighed but didn’t answer him and flicked Soundgarden on. We rode in silence for the next ten minutes as Chris Cornell’s wail drowned out conversation. Unfortunately ,the music, combined with the spooky atmosphere and our task at hand, turned me into a little panicky puss by the time we drove up the long, winding driveway lined with rain-laden fir trees that seemed too heavy to stand up straight. We were at Riverside, the mental house of horrors. The sign at the gate said, “Your well being is our well doing.” Worst slogan ever.
Dex pulled the car up into a visitor’s parking spot in front of a massive, overwhelming brick building that looked extra dense and strangely menacing in the dark. It didn’t help that the fluorescent hall lights that shone from all three stories flickered on and off like the light fixtures all had dying bugs in them. Moths, flies, wasps…wasps in blood. Wasps on Dex. Their hard yellow bodies covering him from head to toe.
The image filled my head and I quickly, instinctively, pressed my palm into my forehead. I caught what I was doing and picked up on the strange air in the car. I took my hand away and slowly turned my head to look at Dex. He was leaning against the steering wheel, eyes wide, watching me.
“We’re here…” he eked out slowly in a quasi-Poltergeist voice.
I gave him a small smile, knowing the question that was to follow. “Just got a sudden headache.”
“Oh sure you did,” he said in weird mix of good-natured sarcasm. “You know they have pills in there for that.”
I looked again at the building as the rain continued to fall, echoing off the roof of the car. I bet they did have pills in there for that. For everything that ailed us.
Which reminded me…see, I had something planned for tonight. Something that Dex didn’t – and wouldn’t – know about. It would only happen if the circumstances were right but a single feel into the very bottom contents of my bag told me everything was ready. It was a plan that made me feel a bit sick, but it was still a plan.
CHAPTER TEN
“Seriously kiddo, are you OK?” Dex reached for me from the driver’s seat and placed the back of his hand against my forehead. His hand felt nice and hot. So I quickly opened the door and stepped into the cool night and faced the mission ahead of us.
“Right as rain,” I said, smiling as the fat, icy drops fell on to my raised cheeks. I drew my coat in close around me as Dex got out on his side and brought out only a wireless mic and a small camera. We’d go back to get the EVPs, infrared and the rest of our ghost-busting goodies if we needed them but we didn’t want to seem too pushy in front of Dr. Hasselback.
We walked together against the rain and wind to the heavy and strangely ornate doors at the front of the old building. Dex tried to open the beasts but after a few attempts, he discovered that it wasn’t that they were too heavy but that they were locked.
He glanced at his phone. “Huh. It’s only five.”
I craned my neck up to get a better look at the windows above but only got rain in my eyes. I wiped them and then tried the door as well. It was locked.
“I told you,” Dex said.
“Maybe they all like to go to bed early here,” I offered. “Didn’t you have a bedtime at your institute? Visiting hours? Curfew?”
I knew by the time I got to “visiting hours” I had gone too far, so I stepped away from the door and looked around again, avoiding Dex’s eyes.
“It’s early,” he said after a minute. He leaned forward and peered through the doors. There was a half-lit desk inside the lobby area with a placard that could have said “Administration” but I wasn’t sure. All I was sure of was that for five in the evening, the hospital looked dead empty. The short clip of a hallway that we could see was devoid of movement, except for those flickering lights, and all the doors were closed. I started to imagine all the horrors behind those plain doors, the psychotic blank faces and lost lives, but I stopped myself. I did not need to develop a fear of hospitals. I was sure that would come later.
I eyed the side of the entrance but there wasn’t even a buzzer or intercom to let people in. I tapped Dex on the shoulder. He looked at me, perplexed.
“You do have this doctor’s number right?” I asked. “Just phone him and be like, dude, what the fuck, we-”
The front doors suddenly rattled back and forth with deafening noise. I grabbed Dex’s arm in fright as my heart jumped around inside my chest. Were the doors moving by themselves or…
A small figure appeared in front of us, on the other side of the doors, as if she rose up from beneath the linoleum floor.
I screamed but reined it in quickly as I got a better look at the woman. At first I thought she was Mary, the ghost we encountered on D’Arcy Island. She was the same height, freakishly short, and had the same stupid glasses and mousy face. But this woman also had a pinched nose, a mass of wrinkles that only comes from being a cold-hearted spinster. Plus she was wearing a white nurse uniform and seemed to be from this century, albeit barely. She glared at us from the other side, turning her small weird head back and forth as if she were a horse that couldn’t look at you head on.
Satisfied, she unlocked the front door and casually pushed it open with all her might. Which was apparently a lot for this tiny, nasty-faced imp. Dex caught the door with his arm and I could tell he was straining to keep it open with the same amount of ease.
“You Mr. Foray and Miss Palomino?” she asked in a voice that had as much reverb as Katherine Hepburn. Her eyes were quick and spastic as they flew between our faces.
“That’s us,” Dex said. He smiled broadly, hoping to charm her, but I could tell from the tightness of his cheekbones that he was nervous and uncomfortable. Maybe he was reminded of Mary too.
She looked him up and down – finding his moody good looks ineffective – before saying, “You’re late!”
Then she turned on her white heel and strode down the hall. We were quickly ushered in through the giant doors and they sealed us in with a jarring slam.
We hurried after her, our shoes squeaking down the hall. She could move fast, whoever the hell she was.
“Sorry, we thought we had enough time to get here,” I called after her, watching her white form wiggle jerkily back and forth with each quick stride. “What’s your name, by the way?”
She raised her hand in the air as if to tell me to shut up.
“I’m Mrs. Roundtree,” she said without looking behind her.
Dex gave me a look that said, “Mrs? Someone’s married to her?” but thankfully he didn’t open his big mouth. We just kept squeaking and skidding after her until we were midway through the long half-lit, half-dark hallway. She had come to an abrupt stop and pointed at a plain door that read ‘Dr. Lewis Hasselback, Head Administrator.’
“He’s waiting for you,” she said. She had a funny way of keeping her lips as glued to her teeth as she talked.
And then she was gone, jerking down the hallway until her white uniform was just a blob against the shadowy corridor.
I took in a deep breath and raised my brows at Dex.
“Can’t charm them all,” he said with a disappointed downturn of his lips and raised his hand to knock on the door. Before he brought it down, it was flung open. A short, balding man with beady eyes and thick frames was looking up at us with an anxious look on his face. I thought that being face to face with a psychologist/psychiatrist/whatever would have brought back some unpleasant memories for both me and Dex. But Dr. Hasselback was so nervy and twitchy that he put me at ease for some reason. None of that calm, condescending demeanor that Dr. Freedman had back when I was a teenager. And judging from Dex’s nonplussed expression, he seemed to feel the same.
“Come in, come in,” the doctor said, opening the door wide and quickly gesturing with his arm while he poked his tiny, tanned head out into the hall and looked up and down it.
I walked close beside Dex and entered the room, a large office that was more messy than orderly. Two hard-backed chairs faced the big oak table, which was strewn with overflowing file folders and piled comically high with a stack of books that seemed to reach halfway to the ceiling. It was like he was playing Jenga with textbooks.
In the far corner of the room were a couch, an armchair and the weird, Disneyland-like set design of a shrink’s office, plus a few storage locker cabinets, which I knew housed some pills, and a sink.
As Dex and I were taking in the scene, the doctor shut the door gently and then scampered over to the desk and took a seat in his rolling chair. He barely looked at us and pointed at the chairs in a rough, careless manner. “Please sit down.”
The chair was hard and uncomfortable, a big change from his cushy leather one. But even though that was the case, Dr. Hasselback looked like he couldn’t be comfortable anywhere. He was already squirming, as if he couldn’t get into an acceptable position.
“Sorry if we’re intruding, doctor,” Dex said, leaning forward in his seat with his diplomat’s face on. “I had mistakenly thought we were on for five.”
The doctor let out a nervous giggle, steepled his hands together and leaned back in the chair with a creak. “Oh, no, you were right on time. It was my fault. I hadn’t told Mrs. Roundtree that you were dropping by. I’m afraid we close the hospital to visitors at 4:30 p.m. I should have mentioned that, too.”
“That’s kinda early for a mental hospital, right?” I said.
His eyes turned unkindly for second. At least I thought they did. It was hard to tell when they were so small and weasely and he was wearing such thick glasses. But he smiled, perfect orthodontics from childhood. “It is early. But it is the winter and we go by the light here. It’s just easier. And our patients don’t get many visitors these days anyway. We don’t have many patients in general.”
