Nineteen
THEY RETURNED TO the library. Tess huddled on the chair, her shoes off, feet pulled up under her, as Jackson started the fire. He took a couple of apples from his bag.
“We’re getting to the bottom,” he said, holding one of them up. “They’re a little battered. Is that all right?”
She nodded, and he tossed it over.
“I’ll need to go into town tomorrow,” he said. “To buy food and a new flashlight.”
“I’m sorry about the flashlight. I dropped it.”
“That wasn’t an accusation, Tess. It might just be the batteries anyway.”
She nodded. She hadn’t noticed his tone—she’d been paying too much attention to his words. He’d go into town. Not they. This partnership would end come morning.
Her only consolation was that she doubted her behavior tonight had scared him off. He’d never had any intention of sticking with her past morning.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said. Now his tone was nonchalant, trying not to rush her, but he couldn’t disguise the note of his usual impatience.
“I’ve always seen them,” she said. “For as long as I can remember.”
“Ghosts?” He answered his own question before she could. “No, you said you aren’t sure they’re ghosts. But you see people? Visions?”
“There are two kinds,” she said. “Some seem like ghosts. I see people from another time. But I can’t communicate with them in any way. They don’t notice me. They’re just…doing whatever they’re doing. Completely unaware of me, even if I talk to them or stand in their path.”
He nodded and said nothing.
“The other kind is like I’m the ghost. One second I’m here, in the regular world. The next, I’m in a different time, with people from it.”
“Can you communicate with those people?”
She shook her head. “It’s the same. Except in those ones, I can’t move anything, like opening a door.”
“Is it the same place? I mean, if you were to pop into one of those visions now, would you be here? In this library?”
She nodded. “Exactly where I am now. Only the time period changes.”
“Always into the past?”
“Yes. It happened downstairs. Tonight. I…I went down to see if anything would happen. I’ve never done that. But I thought maybe I could get answers if I did. If I envision one thing, and we find a completely different answer, then…” She squirmed in the chair. “Then I know for sure it’s not real. That I’m hallucinating.”
“You said the people don’t talk to you. Don’t ask you to do anything.”
She paused. “I heard a woman downstairs. When I fell through yesterday, and again tonight. She was asking for help, but when I answered, she just kept asking.”
“She’s not asking you then. You’re just hearing her cries for help because that’s what she’s doing. Like the others. They just keep doing what they’re doing. Paying no attention to you.”
“Yes.”
“If you were schizophrenic, they’d be asking you to do something. Demanding things or talking to you.”
“Wouldn’t ghosts do the same? Why show themselves if they aren’t going to communicate?”
He said nothing.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked.
He considered for a minute. “Logically, no. I’ve heard too many stories about grieving relatives hoping for contact. Or groaning pipes and bad electrical connections. I don’t completely deny the possibility though. And I’ve certainly heard stories where ghosts don’t interact. They’re just there. It’s the ‘stepping into another time’ part that doesn’t fit. You said you heard voices last night. Did you see anyone?”
“No, I just heard a woman crying. Asking for help. Saying she was sorry. Tonight…tonight I followed the voice. It led to the room with the boxes. She was…”
Tess started shivering convulsively.
Jackson leaped to his feet. “Tess?”
“She was in one of the boxes. Trapped. I opened it. I knew she wasn’t really there, but I had to open it. The box was empty.”
“And the crying stopped?”
She nodded. “For a few minutes. Then it started again, from outside the room. I followed it into one of the rooms with a closet. I stepped in to look around. I was propping the door open with my foot, but I heard a scream and it startled me. The door shut, and I couldn’t get it open. I know there’s no lock. It just—it wouldn’t open.”
Jackson stiffened. His hand dropped to his pocket, pulling out the switchblade. “Like someone was holding it closed.”
“I don’t think so. I’d slipped into another time, so I couldn’t move the door. But there was no way to know it was a different time, meaning I didn’t realize what was going on. So I panicked. I was trapped. That’s what those little rooms were for. Locking people in. Like the boxes.”
He frowned over at her.
“They were restraints,” she said. “Like straitjackets.”
He shook his head. “Psychiatric hospitals did use things like that—cribs—but they were outlawed more than fifty years ago, and they weren’t like those boxes. They were…well, cribs. With slats so the person inside could see out. Even that’s horrible. Those boxes?” He shook his head. “They’d never use something like that.”
“They did,” she said. “There are gouges on the inside. Bloody gouges from the woman trying to claw her way out. That’s what I heard. She was scratching in the box and pleading to be let out. When I opened it, I saw the marks. There and inside the closet.”
“You can see for yourself,” she said.
“Then they’re real.”
“That’s what I said. There are gouges—”
“No, your visions. If you heard someone inside the box, crying and scratching to get out, and then you opened it and saw scratch marks, that means you aren’t imagining these things. They really are happening. Well, no, they did happen. It’s like the opposite of a psychic ability. Instead of seeing the future, you see the past.”
He went quiet, as if lost in his thoughts. Tess didn’t interrupt. She was busy thinking too. This hadn’t occurred to her. If she’d heard a thing and then proved it happened, that was the answer she’d been searching for, wasn’t it? Proof that she wasn’t hallucinating? That somehow she’d opened a door into the past and peeked or stepped through. Unless…
“Can you check the box and the closet?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Check to make sure you see what I did. So we’ll know.”
“Good idea,” he said and pushed to his feet.
The scratches were there. Old ones, caked with dried blood, exactly as she’d seen them. No blood in the closet, just the scratches. And dents too—she saw those now. Dents as if someone had pounded on the door.
Jackson found signs of locks on the outside of both the box and the closet. They’d been removed, but the holes were there.
“I…don’t get it,” Jackson said, fingering the holes. “Why would someone do this?”
“Restraint.”
He shook his head. “Restraint presumes the woman was trying to hurt herself. That’s common in psychiatric care, like I said. You don’t want a patient harming herself or others. Restraints are a last resort, but if they’re needed, they are used. Sedatives. Straitjackets. Padded rooms. But the people in these hurt themselves trying to get out. They panicked. It makes no sense to restrain someone in a box where they can move but can’t see anything. Panic is guaranteed. It would trigger the fear of being buried alive.”
“What?”
He didn’t seem to notice the sharpness in her voice and replied calmly, still examining the door. “Fear of being buried alive. Poe practically made his career writing about it. It’s a common phobia.”
“It is?”
“Sure. That’s the basis of claustrophobia. Even when you know rationally that you can get out, there’s a primitive part of your brain that doesn’t care.” He glanced over at her, lit by candlelight. “Have you ever been falling asleep and your whole body flails?”
“It’s called a hypnagogic jerk. People think it dates back to primates and a fear of falling—out of trees or whatever. When you’re about to fall asleep and your body goes limp, sometimes that primitive part of the brain misinterprets it as falling.”
“Is there anything you don’t know?”
She meant it as a compliment, but he tensed, averting his gaze, his jaw tightening.
“I don’t mean—” she began.
“It’s all right,” he said gruffly. “I go off sometimes. I know. I’ll watch it.”
“No. I like it.” She felt her cheeks flush and was happy for the flickering candlelight. “I mean, I like learning. Especially interesting stuff like that.”
He nodded and busied himself checking the inside of the door, clearly uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken, and she cursed herself. It didn’t matter if she liked hearing him lecture—pointing out that he did lecture drew attention to something that others must not have appreciated.
“Back to the subject,” she said.
“Yes.” The word came on an audible hiss of relief. “I was saying that restraining someone this way wouldn’t be therapeutic. It’s torture. Which makes me wonder if this place”—he looked around—“isn’t what we thought it was. Not a hospital but…” He rubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable again but in a different way. “You said you hear women. There are people, like that jerk we ran into, who kidnap them for…bad things.”
“We don’t know—”
“It’s something to do with medical treatment.” She told him about the man she’d seen and the calendar and the conversation she’d overheard.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean it was a hospital,” he said. “But it doesn’t sound like…the other thing.” He glanced over. “You said he was writing in a journal?”
“I did. And I know where he put it.”