Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

“Gonna share?” Francis asked.

“This is the Lemuel Institute,” Remy explained. “A prominent psychiatric facility that ended up with quite the reputation when some of its more experimental methods of rehab were exposed in the sixties.”

“Let me guess,” Francis said. “They were less than humane.”

Remy started up the steps toward the doors. “Sounded like it was a regular house of horrors—the mentally retarded mingling with the criminally insane, and the medical staff working practically unsupervised. The reports of unauthorized medical procedures were staggering. The place was finally shut down in the early seventies.” He stood at the door, peering through the filthy glass at the corridor beyond.

“Are we going in?” Francis asked.

“Yeah,” Remy sighed. “Not that I want to, but we need to figure out why Aszrus would come here.”

Remy stepped closer to Francis, sweeping him up into his winged embrace, and the two disappeared from the front steps to reappear in the hallway beyond the front door.

The institution was no more pleasant on the inside. It was in the midst of decay, the floors covered with plaster from broken walls and collapsed ceilings. It was obvious that trespassers had frequented the building, leaving behind their own, spray-painted scars upon various surfaces.

“Okay,” Francis said, looking around. “I’m not seeing why a general in the army of Heaven would have any business here.”

To the right of the entrance was what looked to be a large sunroom. Filthy blankets and fast-food trash were strewn about the floor.

Something flashed briefly, and Remy gradually changed the shape of his eyes to better focus. Shades of people—some standing before the windows staring out, other sitting in chairs in front of an old nineteen-inch television, others pacing back and forth as if in a trance—appeared to him.

Residual impressions left upon the building.

Ghosts by any other definition.

They did not see him, and wouldn’t, even if he attempted to communicate with them. This was perfectly common for buildings such as this, with powerful emotional energies charging the very environment like a battery.

“We’ve got ghosts,” Remy announced, hooking a finger toward the sunroom as he started to follow Francis, who was standing at the far end of the corridor in front of a pair of swinging doors.

“No shit,” Francis responded, pointing through the broken glass of one of the doors.

Remy came up alongside him to see what he was pointing at.

There was a nurse in the hallway, wearing a proper white dress and cap with a blue stripe around the top. She was pushing a cart filled with trays of small, paper soufflé cups, disappearing into rooms to dispense her meds before coming out again. They could actually hear her white, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiled floors as she went about her business.

“Probably a residual haunt,” Remy said. “Just like the ones in the sunroom.”

The nurse suddenly lifted her gaze to them.

“Are you going to stand there and gawk, or are you going to help me?” she asked.

“I don’t think she’s residual,” Francis said.

She placed her ghostly hands upon her hips and stared at them in annoyance. “Don’t tell me that agency has sent me another couple’a newbies,” the nurse said in disgust. “I’ve got five nurses out with the trots, and I don’t have time to hold hands with new nurses. You two either help me with this med pass, or you can head on out of here.”

She left the cart, passing through a closed door into the room beyond it.

“She thinks we’re nurses,” Francis said.

“And new ones at that,” Remy answered.

“What should we do? Ignore her?”

“That would be sort of rude, wouldn’t it?”

Francis shrugged. “It’s not like we could really help her.”

“Yeah,” Remy agreed. “I wonder if she could help us though.”

“What, like maybe she saw something?”

Remy nodded and pushed through the swinging door, cutting a swath through the plaster and other detritus left on the corridor floor.

The nurse walked through the wall and stopped to stare at him.

“Well?” she asked petulantly.

“Sorry,” Remy said. “But we can’t help you.”

“Then what did they send you for?” she asked huffily.

Remy shed his human guise, allowing his true form to manifest itself: a winged being of radiance, transcending humanity.

“They didn’t,” he said, stepping closer to the nurse. The name tag pinned to the front of her white dress identified her as LeeAnne.

LeeAnne’s expression turned to one of panic.

“No,” she cried, stepping back. “I’m not ready to go. There are still so many who need their medicine . . . who need to be taken care of. . . . Please . . .”

“Great,” Francis said from where he stood just outside the door. “You’re scaring the shit out of her.”

“I don’t see you doing anything to help,” Remy quipped.

“Hey, I got us here.”

Remy returned to his human shape, hoping it would calm the spirit.

“It’s all right, LeeAnne,” he said, soothing her fears. “No one is going to take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

She was still in a tizzy. “There’re so many here . . . so many that need looking after.”

And she was right.

Remy looked down the corridor to see the ghostly shapes drifting out from behind the walls and closed doors, slowly floating down the hallway toward their caregiver.

“This could be bad,” Francis warned.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Remy tried to explain. “We’re not here to hurt anybody.”

The ghosts stood just behind LeeAnne, and Remy could see evidence of some of the twisted medical experiments. Even in their nearly translucent form, jagged lobotomy scars showed upon their shaved skulls.

“Then why are you here,” LeeAnne asked.

“We’re looking for some answers,” Remy said. “Someone like me was here not too long ago, and we’d like to know why.”

“Like you?” LeeAnne questioned.

“Angel,” Remy said. “A powerful angel.”

The nurse shook her translucent head.

“There hasn’t been any like you here that I can remember,” she said. She nibbled at a ghostly fingernail as she thought. “But it’s been so busy . . .” She seemed to drift off then, staring at something Remy could not see.

“LeeAnne?” Remy prompted.

But it was as if she could not hear him. She turned and went back to her medication cart, resuming her duties.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Francis said, still at the swinging door.

The patient-apparitions drifted off as well, many fading away as they headed farther into the building.

Remy shrugged and was heading back toward his friend when Francis suddenly pointed down the corridor past him.

“Look.”

Remy turned around to see a single ghost dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe standing there, watching them.

“Hello?” Remy called to him.

“Let me try,” Francis said, passing Remy on his way down the hall toward the ghost.

“Did you see something, old-timer?” Francis asked.

The ghost began to shuffle off.

“Hey,” Francis called after him.

The ghost stopped, turned ever so slightly, and motioned for them to follow him.

Remy joined Francis, and they did as the ghost had ordered.

Nurse LeeAnne was back at her cart again, fussing over ghostly meds as they passed her.

“Are you going to help me?” she asked them.

“We’re supposed to be working another floor,” Remy told her.

She seemed to accept that with a shrug, and resumed medicating the patients on the first floor.

Remy and Francis continued to follow the old ghost. Every once in a while he would stop, as if resting, and then he would continue.