Introduction
A hospital again.
It was a familiar ceiling. He'd woken up to similar ceilings far too often.
From boy to man, he returned to consciousness from injury or illness to the same ceiling.
It was smooth apart from the dimples around the light fixed at the centre of the rectangular room and at the far end, near to the door, the ceiling had the texture of cottage cheese. He smiled, groggily, he'd done that. He'd had such an intense fever, caught from a visit to the Hale house, that the heat from his body in the bed below had started to melt the ceiling. Even the curtains had caught fire.
From boy to man…
He swam in and out of consciousness for a moment and then forced himself back again.
He was a man now. Why was he in the hospital because of visiting the Hale house in the rain? When had he ever been to the Hale house before it burned? He hadn't. So why was the ceiling melting?
He felt panic, and pain, and an inability to get out of the bed. That was when something moved through the air. He tried to see it but there was just a Will-o'-the wisp of light and shape, flickering out of sight.
He was dying.
Drawing in a desperate breath to cry out, two cold palms clasped the sides of his face and he was overcome with a need to surrender to unconsciousness again. The fear subsided, along with the pain, and his feeble struggles fell still.
A face loomed over his as he slipped away. He knew that face.
It was a reminder of his childhood, of his greatest tormentor, a lifelong guilt, and someone he knew was dead.
The face smiled down at him as her powers flowed through the ghostly fingers and into his head.
The ceiling was swallowed up by the blackness.
