Haunted (Otherworld 5)

To get to Amanda Sullivan's prison, I had to walk fifteen miles beyond the city drop-off point. Most of the way, I jogged. I needed to stretch my muscles and shuck the faint sense of claustrophobia that settles in me after spending too long in any one place. After reading those articles, inactivity wasn't the only thing that got my legs moving. The Fates said the Nix struck every few years, and that left the illusion that I had plenty of time. Maybe they'd done that intentionally, so I wouldn't feel pressured into rushing, but those articles had made me painfully aware that just because the Nix struck on average every two years didn't mean she wasn't out there right now, lining up her next partner.

By the time I reached the prison, it was morning. I entered through the visitors' door. Got to skip the security check, though. Good thing, too, because there was quite a lineup.

I slid through the metal detector, past the two women at the front of t

he line. Both were older than me, one maybe in her late forties, the other fiftyish. Mothers of inmates; I could tell that by looking at them.

The older one held her chin high, defiant, certain someone had made a terrible mistake, that her child was innocent, and someone would pay for this travesty. The younger one kept her chin down, meeting the guard's questions with a polite murmur and sad smile but not meeting anyone's gaze. The guilt of a mother who sees her child in prison and sees herself to blame, not quite sure what she's done, but certain she's done something--maybe it was that glass of wine in her first trimester or that parent-teacher meeting she missed in fifth grade, some minuscule parenting oversight that had led to this.

I walked past them and into the waiting room--a windowless gray blob of a room that said "We'd really rather you didn't come at all, but if you must, don't expect the damned Hilton." Shabby red-vinyl chairs dotted the room like an outbreak of chicken pox. Goodwill rejects, by the looks of them. Yes, there are things even Goodwill won't touch. From the way the visitors milled around the chairs, giving them wide berth, they weren't touching them, either.

As I crossed the room I passed spouses, lovers, parents, and friends, all waiting impatiently...eager to see their loved ones or eager to get this duty visit over with. In the far corner, nearest the guard station, stood a huddle of college-age kids, mostly male. Their badges proclaimed them to be visitors from the state police college. Not one of those badges was flipped over or tucked under a jacket, but all were displayed prominently, lest someone mistake them for a real visitor, someone who actually knew one of the lowlifes in this place. An attitude that would serve them well in law enforcement.

I walked past the cop wannabes, past the guard station, crossed to the prisoners' side of the Plexiglas partition, then headed through the door they'd enter. I came out in a single-level cell block. The first couple of cells I passed were empty, though they showed signs of habitation--a shirt draped over a chair here, a paperback open on a bed there. The inmates must have been out doing something. Work detail maybe, or occupational therapy, exercise, whatever. The particulars of prison life were a mystery to me, though some might say it was a life experience I'd earned many times over.

I only hoped Sullivan was here someplace, both because it would make my job easier and because, after what she'd done, I didn't want her experiencing the pleasure of life beyond bars ever again--not even to break rocks under a hot Texas sun.

I continued down the row of cells. The odd one was occupied, the inmate maybe awaiting visitors or maybe held back as punishment, like a kid forced to stay at school during a field trip. I'd almost reached the far end when a giggle exploded behind me. I turned to see a small figure squeeze through the bars of a cell. It looked like a little boy.

The child scampered the other way, his back to me. Then he paused and looked into the cell on either side. He clutched his hands in front of him, cupping something. Dark-haired and dark-skinned, he wore clothing that had been mended and remended in a way rarely seen since the advent of garment factories and cheap ready-made goods. His shirt, blue faded into gray from washing, was several sizes too large, the elbows patched, as were the knees of his too-small pants, the frayed cuffs riding midway up his calves. His feet were bare.

I quietly walked up behind him, pausing a few yards away so I didn't startle him. And startle him I could--I was almost certain of that. He had to be a ghost. And yet...well, it didn't make sense. The boy's clothing was a century out of fashion, but the divine powers weren't so cruel as to make a soul spend eternity in a child's form. Young ghosts matured to young adulthood before the physical aging process ended. And when the Fates picked parents for child ghosts, they chose only the best, those who'd longed for children in life and never been blessed, or those who'd longed for more after Mother Nature closed their reproductive window. Child ghosts were, thank God, rare enough that the Fates could afford to be picky, and they would never select someone who let their child run around a prison.

I gave one of those "throat-clearing" coughs I'd promised Jaime. The boy didn't notice. Instead, he walked to the next cell, looked inside, and smiled. Then he turned sideways and squeezed through the bars, acting as if the metal was a physical barrier, and yet when his toe struck one, it passed through like any ghost's. I crept close enough to see inside the cell. In the bed lay a young woman, no older than twenty, her eyes blazing with fever.

The boy walked to the bedside and opened his hands. On his palm lay a tiny blue feather. He held it out to the sick woman, but she only moaned. A frown crossed his thin face, but lasted only a second before the sun-bright smile returned. He reached over and laid the feather on her pillow, touched her cheek, then tiptoed to the bars and squeezed through.

As he came out, I crouched, bringing myself down to his height. He saw me and tilted his head, faintly quizzical.

"Hello, there," I said. "That was a very pretty feather. Where did you find it?"

He grinned, motioned for me to follow, then tore off.

"Wait," I called. "I didn't mean--"

He disappeared down a side hall. I followed. Medea could wait.

When I rounded the corner, the boy was standing in front of a door, dancing from foot to foot with impatience. Before I could call to him, he grabbed at the door handle and pantomimed opening it. It didn't budge, but he acted as if it had, scooting through the imaginary opening.

The door led into a short hall lined with shelves and cleaning supplies. At the end, a hatch in the floor had been boarded over. Again, the boy went through the motions of opening it.

"I don't think you should--"

He darted through. I walked to the hatch door, lowered myself to all fours, then pushed my legs through. Stuff like this was tricky--mentally disorienting. Like walking on floors or sitting on furniture in the living world. Seems simple enough, until you consider that those floors and that furniture don't exist in my dimension. So what keeps ghosts from dropping through? Voluntary delusion. If you believe the floor exists or the chair exists, you can treat it as a physical object, at least in the sense that you won't fall through it. So when passing through this trapdoor, I grabbed the floor and lowered myself down, even though I couldn't feel anything under my fingers.

As my feet went through the boarded-up door, I cast a light-ball spell. My stronger magic might be hit-and-miss in this world, but I could still count on the simple stuff. Beneath the trapdoor was a ladder, a rickety half-rotted thing that promised to collapse under the slightest weight. Luckily, I was weight-free these days. So I set my foot onto the first rung, and climbed down.

I landed in a tiny, dark room. Concrete walls sweated rivulets of water that stank of sewage. I cast my light around. Nothing to see. Just bare walls and a bare dirt floor. I turned. On the wall behind me was a wooden door crisscrossed with boards. As I stepped toward it, something jabbed the bottom of my foot and I jumped in surprise.

I moved my light down to see a small green globe, half-buried in the dirt. Bending over, I picked it up. A marble. Jade green, its glassy surface clouded with scratches. I turned it over in my hand and smiled. A ghost marble, like the ghost wheelchair Kristof had conjured in the psych hospital. I tucked the marble into my pocket, then walked through the door.

I came out in a long hall. Doors lined one side, thick wooden doors reinforced with steel bands, solid except for a slit about two-thirds of the way up, covered with a metal plate.

When I reached the third door, I heard crying. I stopped and listened. It came from behind the door. I stepped through into a small room, less than five by five. On the wooden floor lay a moldering pallet, half-covered with a moth-eaten, coarse blanket. The room was empty, yet I could still hear crying. It came from all sides, as if the very walls were sobbing.

"Didn't mean it, didn't mean it," whispered a voice.

"Who's there?" I said, twisting, trying to pinpoint the source. "Is that you, hon? You didn't do anything--"