Her Last Whisper (9 page)

A rumble of unfamiliar noise grew steadily louder as they approached the junction of the corridors. It told Charlie that a great deal of activity was occurring just out of her sight; hearing it and speculating on its cause upped her anxiety level so much that her chest felt tight.

Once again Michael must have been able to read her face, because he said, “Steady. We got this, babe.”

Despite her best efforts, Pugh caught up with her. “In your opinion, Dr. Stone, could we be dealing with some kind of contagion issue in the infirmary? A virus or some other type of disease?”

Charlie saw that his face was freshly lined with worry. Behind him, Tony was also looking worried, but unlike Pugh’s she was pretty sure that Tony’s worry was strictly on her behalf.

From his and Pugh’s point of view, of course, she was alone, racing away from them toward the elevators, claiming to be dizzy and in need of fresh air. Everything she had done from the time they had first seen her in her office had been (face it) bizarre. Her behavior must be setting off all kinds of red flags.

She ought to be glad that Pugh was inquiring about possible medical issues. At least that gave her a cover story she could embrace.

“Why do you ask?” She cast a fleeting glance at Pugh. “Is there something I should know?”

“There’s been a death in the infirmary,” Pugh announced heavily. “I was just told of it.”

Oh, no
.

“Dr. Creason?” It was all she could do to keep the wobble out of her voice.

“Fuck,” Michael said.

“No.” Pugh shook his head. “We’re in the process of having Dr. Creason transported to Lonesome Pine Hospital for evaluation. What I’d like you to do if you feel up to it is take a look at him while he’s still here in the prison. I would really value an in-house opinion on his condition. If whatever caused this is contagious, Wallens Ridge is looking at a visit by the CDC. Maybe even quarantine. Even if it’s not, unless the death is by natural causes, the Bureau of Prisons will have to be notified and will probably investigate. If we could get out in front of it, identify the cause of the illnesses and death—”

So much was happening in this new corridor that Charlie’s step momentarily faltered. She missed the rest of what Pugh had to say as everything assaulted her senses at once.

“Would you look at this,” Michael muttered, and Charlie did even as she picked up the pace again. Noise, confusion, way more people and activity than there should be.

The kaleidoscope of images resolved itself into what, among other things, was clearly the emergency medical evacuation Pugh had spoken of, in progress.

In the foreground, two stretchers raced toward her—which meant that they were really racing toward the turnoff to an adjacent hallway that held the elevator banks. That turnoff was located about a quarter of the way up the hall from her end and was the goal of her little party, too. The rattling of the stretchers’ wheels formed a frantic counterpoint to the barked exchanges of the orderlies pushing them and the paramedics running alongside. A quartet of guards ran with the stretchers, too. More guards in riot gear stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the infirmary doors, barring outside access. A third stretcher, being pushed far more slowly than the first two, was just emerging from the infirmary through the line
of guards. A blue body bag lay on that one, and Charlie realized that she had to be looking at the fatality.

She was shaken by the thought that an inmate might have died from having a spirit enter his body. Although Michael had only said something about
two
spirits coming through with him …

Alarmed, senses on high alert as her attention switched back to the pair of stretchers that were now just a few yards away and barreling ever closer, she got her first good look at the face of the victim strapped to the stretcher that was out in front. She had just affirmatively identified the unconscious-looking figure as Creason when it happened.

The voices inside her head returned.

Please don’t do this to me
, the woman begged, making Charlie miss a step and instinctively clutch at Michael—fat lot of good that did—for support. She stumbled a little as her hands went right through him, and barely noticed the accompanying electric tingle that was all that physical contact with him amounted to as he, in turn, grabbed at her in a useless attempt to catch and steady her.

She was too tightly focused on what was happening in her head. It was the same voice she’d heard in the interview room with Spivey. A woman’s voice, terrified.

Everything else went a little out of focus. She could hear her pulse pounding in thick, fast strokes in her ears. Charlie shook her head, trying to clear it.

Not now
, she pleaded with the universe silently. She couldn’t deal with the voices
now
.

“Charlie—” Michael’s voice was hard with fear for her. “What’s wrong?”

I won’t tell
, the anguished woman promised, and it was all Charlie could do not to clutch her head with both hands. The episode was so vivid that she experienced instant vertigo. She felt a rush of cold sweat.

Please
, the woman screamed, just like she had before, and Charlie closed her eyes and stopped dead and shuddered.

“Damn it, Charlie, what’s happening? Talk to me.” Michael’s exclamation was what penetrated, what had her opening her eyes
and looking up at him in mute distress. He loomed over her, familiar and safe, and she concentrated on him, mentally anchoring herself to him as a boat in a storm might cast its anchor to a rock. She heard Pugh and Tony saying something, too, but she couldn’t understand them and was only vaguely aware that they were there, or of where she was or what was going on or anything else because the woman’s terrified scream was echoing through her head and shredding her insides clear down to the bone.

As it died away she had an instant of clarity in which she became aware of many things at once: a man’s—Tony’s—sturdy arm was around her shoulders: he was asking “Charlie, are you all right?”; Michael, cursing and vividly present as he leaned close, unable to touch her because of what he was; Pugh saying something, too, that she completely missed; the two nearest stretchers rumbling over the concrete floor not far away now from where her party had been stopped in their tracks by what was happening to her. Charlie watched as the stretchers with their accompanying retinue turned the corner into the other corridor, the one with the elevator banks, and disappeared from view.

She even had time to draw a single deep breath.

Then another scream, a window-rattling shriek from the direction of the infirmary, pierced the air. It was so loud and harrowing that it caused her heart to jump and her insides to clench and her blood to turn to ice. Her gaze jerked toward the sound as she made a frantic attempt to identify the source.

It wasn’t a voice inside her head this time. It wasn’t a woman at all. It was a man.

But she was once again the only living creature who could hear it.

Because the man was dead.

Even as she registered that, she saw him.

Pale and wild-eyed, his mouth stretched wide as his ungodly scream built until it echoed from the ceiling and walls and Charlie thought her eardrums must burst from the sheer shrill volume of it, Walter Spivey pounded down the hall toward her. His big, flabby body was bare to the waist and shiny with sweat. He had one arm extended in front of him. He was, Charlie saw with a burst of horror,
clutching a gleaming silver scalpel in his fist. As she watched, he slashed the air savagely with it.

She knew the instant he saw her, the instant he recognized her. His eyes widened. The scream mutated into a roar.

“You! Dr. Bitch!
You
did this to me! I’m going to kill you,” he bellowed, and came galloping toward her.

Charlie almost lost it. She flinched instinctively, and probably would have leaped backwards if Tony’s protective arm hadn’t been around her shoulders holding her steady. She deduced instantly that Spivey had to be the fatality in the infirmary that Pugh had spoken of. She was all but certain that it was his body that lay in the blue body bag on the slow-moving stretcher that trundled its unhurried way down the hall, far behind the Spivey that was charging her in his maddened state. She knew that what she was seeing was Spivey’s phantom, knew that it (almost certainly) couldn’t hurt her, knew that what was menacing her was (probably) no more solid or dangerous than a puff of air, but she was so unnerved by everything that had happened, so absolutely not herself, so unsure of the true parameters of the supernatural world that she’d thought she knew, it was all she could do not to react as any normal woman would when being charged by a scalpel-wielding serial killer and scream her head off.

Only years of experience with the violent dead enabled her to keep silent and hold her ground. Squaring her shoulders, stiffening her spine, reminding herself that this was her world and she knew how to deal with it, she was preparing herself to withstand the imminent
onslaught when Spivey shrieked, “I’m going to cut you up, bitch!” and launched himself at her.

She could feel his terrible energy in the air, tangible as an electric field. Spivey’s face was contorted with rage and hate. The blade in his hand gleamed vividly like any real one as it sliced the air. She couldn’t help it: her breath caught. Her pulse jumped. Of course the scalpel would pass harmlessly through her. She
knew
that, but …

Michael leaped in front of her, all big and bad and aggressive as he planted himself between her and Spivey.

“How about trying for a piece of
me
, motherfucker?” he roared.

Charlie had less than a split second to remember what Michael was, to take comfort in knowing that he’d heard Spivey’s screams, that he could see Spivey, too, that even if all the rules of ghost-world that she had lived by for so long turned out to be wrong or incomplete and there was a whole universe of terrible things out there that she’d had no clue even existed
he was in that world with her
, when it hit her: Michael was dead just like Spivey. He and Spivey were on the same side of the divide.

Spivey might not be able to hurt her,
but he could hurt Michael
.

Charlie’s heart leaped into her throat.
Get out of his way
, she wanted to scream at Michael.
He can’t hurt
me!

But she couldn’t. The words stuck in her throat. She had maintained her façade of normality for so long that her instinct to stay silent in the face of anything the supernatural threw at her kicked in to choke off all utterance.

Anyway, it was too late.

Spivey was in mid-leap, almost on top of Michael, scalpel flashing, his bulky body flying through the air like it weighed nothing at all—because it didn’t.

“Bastard!” Spivey screamed at Michael.

Eyes wide with horror, pulse pounding, Charlie watched Michael bracing to meet the attack—

Then Spivey screamed again, a totally different sound than before, a hoarse, terrible cry so full of fear and pain that she felt every tiny hair on her body catapult upright in reaction. Her breath caught as Spivey, writhing and screaming, shot straight toward the ceiling as though he was in the grip of—

The hunter!

Heart hammering, Charlie barely had time to register the immense column of shimmering air surging behind Spivey before he vanished.

The shimmer vanished, too.

Spivey’s scream was cut off like someone had slammed a soundproof door on it.

The place where Spivey and the hunter had been was eerily calm, eerily silent. Nothing but empty air.

Charlie’s chest was so tight that she could scarcely breathe. Her heart pounded unmercifully. The attack of nausea that always accompanied her close encounters with unfamiliar spirits slammed her like a fist to the stomach. Swallowing in an attempt to control it, she felt the rough edge of metal digging into her sweat-dampened palm. Glancing down, she saw that her subconscious had been quicker to recognize the danger than her conscious mind: without even being aware that she was doing it, she had pulled the horseshoe out of her pocket and was gripping it for all she was worth.

“Jesus Christ.” Sounding shaken himself, Michael took an unsteady step back, then turned sharply toward Charlie. Their eyes met for a charged instant. They both knew what had happened: the hunter had grabbed Spivey.

They both knew that the thing could return at any time.

For Michael.

“If it comes back, stay the hell out of the way,” Michael growled.

Tamping down on the nausea—now was definitely not the time—Charlie curled her lip at him. Silent message,
when pigs fly
.

“I
will
look at Dr. Creason for you,” Charlie said to the others in a voice that was so strong and calm in the face of how bad she felt and the rampant fear that was surging through her that she surprised herself. She was already pulling free of Tony’s supportive arm and casting a commanding look at Pugh as she brushed past him. Both men regarded her with surprise mixed with consternation but she didn’t care. Didn’t have time to care. Her whole focus was on keeping Michael safe. Moving away from them, she threw over her shoulder, “On the way down in the elevators. Let’s see if we can catch the stretchers, shall we?”

This time she flat-out ran. Michael had obviously gotten a burst of whatever worked as ghost adrenaline from that second unexpected encounter with the hunter, because he was still exuding a dangerous energy as he caught up with her.

“What happened to you back there? Before the hunter?” he demanded. Those unnerving black eyes were intent on her face.

Dear Lord, she had almost forgotten about that.
That
was how terrified for him she was.

Telling him that she’d heard the voices again was potentially way too fraught a conversation to be as one-sided as it would have to be in these circumstances, or to be conducted while they ran for their lives. She gave a slight shake of her head:
later
.

Wingtips slapping the concrete, Tony caught up with her next. His cheekbones were flushed, his mouth was tight, and his tie and coattails were flying. He looked at her with a frown. “Charlie, hold up! What was that back there? I thought you were about to pass out.”