Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

For once, Ricky was not right.

When I started to worry, Ricky pulled over at a gas station with a graffiti-covered pay phone. I called Gabriel from it. He answered, which took away every possible explanation except the one that hurt the most: I needed him, and he didn't give a damn. I hung up without a word.

--

The psych hospital. It had a name, I was sure, but I'd never looked it up. I would have preferred never to think of it again.

There was an unconnected local cemetery beside the hospital grounds. The first time we visited, we'd walked through it and I'd reflected that, as creepy as graveyards are supposed to be, it didn't bother me at all. But the abandoned hospital? It was the most frightening place I'd ever seen--in real life, in movies, even in nightmares.

The hospital buildings sat on at least ten acres of overgrown decay. I should have been fascinated, as I was by Villa Tuscana. I was not fascinated, except perhaps in the most basic definition of the word, where you can't look away in spite of yourself. The visions I'd had there were enough to make me not want to go back. Yet it was more than that. It was the pervasive sense of the place, a dread and terror that crept under my skin and nestled in the marrow of my bones. Whatever one's faith, death means the end of life on this earth. The prospect is unpleasant, but I figure once it happens, it happens, over and done. The hospital represented a very different kind of death.

There is no escape from the prison of the mind. I'd seen those words there. Phantom words left imprinted on my brain. Madness was inescapable. The hospital wasn't an old-fashioned lunatic asylum, with chains welded to the floors, but you'd be imprisoned there nonetheless. In my visions, I'd seen people trapped there. Women. The little girl said that I was tapping into hereditary memories. Were those women like me? Tainted by fae blood? Driven mad by it?

Could I be driven mad by it?

Like before, the chained gates had appeared locked until we got close enough to see that the lock itself was undone. The gate gave an ominous whine as Ricky swung it open.

"A word of warning," I said as we walked in. "The last time I was here, I saw visions."

"When you were with me?"

"Yes."

His gaze settled on me, not angry that I'd kept that from him. Only concerned. "Well, if it happens this time, tell me. Please. That might make it easier."

"It will. Thanks."

We headed up the overgrown road, picking our way past chunks of pavement, the grass and weeds breaking through, leaving a cobblestone of old asphalt. Trees stretched over us, the branches reaching out to one another but not quite meeting. I could imagine this road fifty years ago, in the bright summer sun, a cool and dark passage with a wind whispering through the leaves. A pretty sight, I'm sure, but I'm equally sure that no one was thinking of beauty when they planted these trees. They were a landscape transition, hiding the buildings beyond from the outside world. You'd turn in from the country r

oad, pass through this leafy tunnel, and come out in the stark, cold reality of the hospital grounds.

After a quarter mile, squat industrial buildings replaced the trees lining the road. In their day, they'd have held little architectural interest, and even as ruins they weren't any more enticing. Ugly cinder blocks with boarded-up and broken-out windows.

"Eden . . ."

The voice came as a whisper on the breeze. I turned.

"Hear something?" Ricky asked.

"You didn't?"

He made a noise that sounded like a no, as if reluctant to admit to it, reaching over at the same time to touch my hand, his closed switchblade refreshingly cool against my fingers.

"We'll go that way, then," he said, nodding in the direction I'd turned. "Whatever happens, stay close. No splitting up this time, okay?"

I nodded, and we headed along a narrow passage between two buildings. There was no path there, not even a worn strip of dirt, but we walked through and found ourselves at a gate so ivy-choked that, from the road, it had looked like a bush.

"Where's the path?" I said. "If there's a gate, there should be something leading to it. More than a gap between buildings."

"Yeah."

I took a closer look at the ivy. "I'm no gardener, but I helped ours enough to know this isn't native to Illinois. It was planted here." I eased back and looked at the thin wrought iron, completely engulfed in flora. "It's almost like they tried to hide the gate. Or is my imagination just running away with me?"

"Then we've got the same imagination." He cleared enough ivy to peer through the gate. "Okay, that's weird. We have a fenced yard of nothing."

He took hold of the gate and yanked. The ivy fell away easily. Too easily.

"Someone's opened this for us," he said.