It was an hour after breakfast. Many of the patients were at personal or occupational therapy. Those that weren't, had the luxury of choosing to either spend time in the common area, the hall, or their room. Patients were allowed to visit one another's rooms and Heather was doing just that, with Billie Dean.

Both were seated on the floor, facing each other, hands clasped. Billie Dean's eyes were closed in concentration. Heather watched her intently, waiting for some sign that what they were trying to do was working.

"Sara?" Billie Dean murmured in a tranquil tone. She didn't open her eyes. "Sara? Are you with us?"

For a moment it seemed as though nothing would happen but then Heather's hair stirred and lifted, tickled by a warm breeze from nowhere. There was a faint scent of peppermint that came with the ghostly wind.

Billie Dean smiled and opened her eyes to a dreamy half-mast. "Sara."

She was ready to say more but Heather stiffened abruptly and her eyes went wide as she stared off into nowhere. Her body straightened more, unnaturally so, and her hands gripped Billie Dean's so hard that the medium had to tear away from her to avoid injury.

"Heather!"

Billie Dean reached for her friend's shoulders but encountered a psychic force strong enough to propel her backward onto her ass. She winced and scrambled back over just as the girl collapsed. Billie Dean caught her awkwardly and pulled the younger woman close.

"Heather! Heather, sweetheart, say something!" Billie Dean rolled the girl over so she could see her face.

Heather's eyes fluttered open and it took her a moment to focus on Billie Dean. She looked dazed.

"Heather? Are you okay?"

The girl stirred and frowned. "I'm not Heather. I'm Sara."

"No. No, honey, you're not. You're Heather. Sara is a ghost."

Sara smiled with Heather's lips. "I am Sara. Heather is sleeping."

Billie Dean could see her then, like a double exposure on a photograph, overlapping Heather's form. She had to concentrate to see the girl, but she could see her. "Oh, Sara! You can't just—" She was hesitant to use the word 'possess'. "Borrow her body. You have to let her go."

Sara pulled away from the woman. "I will. Just... not yet."

Billie Dean looked worried. "Please. You'll get her in trouble." She didn't know what else to say, to reason with the ghost girl.

"I won't. I promise," Sara said, crossing her heart with a finger. "I just want to— to be alive. For just a little bit. She doesn't mind. She let me in." She lowered her chin then and her eyes got moist. "I'm not going to do anything. I just want to remember, for a little bit. It's so lonely where I was."

Billie Dean looked at her helplessly. There was nothing she could. She couldn't tell the staff. They'd think she had cracked completely. She couldn't help feeling for the ghost girl, too. So young to be trapped in such a horrible place. Her death must have been heartbreaking. "Just—Please just. Be careful. All right?"

Sara smiled. "I will." Then she touched Billie Dean's cheek lightly. "It's okay," she assured.

But Billie Dean knew it wasn't okay. It was very not okay.

—

Sara left Billie Dean's room in a daze. Just being solid was a euphoric feeling and Heather's body was under the influence of sedatives as well. The combination was intoxicating. The hall of the women's ward swayed gently to her perception and she had to keep a hand on the wall to steady herself as she walked.

The artificial lights flickered overhead and washed the hallway in faded blue. In the distance, she could hear someone screaming like they were being tortured. Further away: laughter; maniacal laughter that echoed through the ward. She saw nurses and nuns, orderlies and patients. The wan light cast sharp shadows on their faces but their eyes found her and she could feel the air stir when they passed and smell the scent of them.

Briarcliff was alive.

The asylum Sara had been forced to call home for so long was a nightmare. Dark and lonely, Sara rarely saw anyone in the wretched place. Weeks would stretch by without her seeing so much as an insect. The few sentient things she encountered most often were terrifying. The buildings, too, were horrible: Decay and entropy ruled the Deadlands. Sara had believed that the hospital had been abandoned by the living. It was obvious to her now that it hadn't been. The version of the hospital she'd been in for so long was hell. This, by comparison, was salvation.

Sara could feel heat from the radiator she passed. She could smell bleach and food. When she passed an old woman in a wheelchair, the old lady looked at her. The drooling patient saw her and she smiled. Sara smiled back, grateful to be spontaneously acknowledged. Mesmerized by her own corporealness, Sara went over to the old woman to lightly pet the snarled steel-gray curls that clung to her scalp.

The old woman cackled, amused by the girl's stupor. "I ain't a dog, silly girl!"

"Please forgive her," Billie Dean interceded, catching Heather's hand before she could touch the elderly patient again. "She's, uh. They drugged her."

"Story of my life," grunted the old woman.

The invalid patient didn't seem offended in the least. She'd been the target of much worse in Briarcliff. Still, Billie Dean thought it best to move her friend along, so she guided her with an arm around her shoulders toward the common room.

"You can't go around touching people," she insisted in as gentle a tone as she could. "You'll get in trouble. Weren't there rules when you were here?"

Sara blinked at her with big eyes. "I... don't know." She thought about it, one brow dipping down. When she tried to remember, the first thing that came to mind was her doll. Then thoughts of a scary doctor followed, making her nervous. She didn't want to think about him. Thinking about him might make him appear. "I don't remember. What are the rules?"

Since they were in the common room by then, Billie Dean motioned to the record player. "Never touch that." She clucked her tongue remembering poor Violet's recent encounter with the contraption. Then she ushered Heather to the nearest unoccupied couch. "Let's see. What else? Always do what the nuns and orderlies tell you."

Sara looked around the commons, amazed to see so many living people. "Were they always here?"

"What?"

"The people. There are so many!"

The psychic looked around. Less than half of the patients were in the commons at the moment. Many were still at various forms of therapy. "You don't see them normally?"

Sara shook her head. "The asylum's usually empty. Dead. Like me."

She smiled then, a look that suited Heather's pretty face nicely. Billie Dean hadn't seen the young woman smile much and certainly not that easily.

"We'll find a way to free you," Billie Dean promised, giving Heather's hand a squeeze.

Sara smiled bigger. "I am free."

"You—you can't stay... like this," the older woman faltered. "Heather—"

"Heather likes me," the girl said stubbornly. She wasn't smiling anymore. "Don't you like me?"

Billie Dean smiled but it was a frail, trembly expression. "Of course I do! That's why I'm helping you." She hugged her then and pet her hair until she felt the girl relax in her embrace.

She was worried for her friend. What if Sara wouldn't let go? She wondered if she should talk to the Monsignor. Of anyone in Briarcliff, her cousin would be most likely to understand. But would he help her? Could he?

...

Tate stared at the blank sheet of paper on the table before him. It was his first day of art therapy and he'd been glad, at first, to get the opportunity to do something other than sitting around. Granted, there was a small art corner in the common area but the supplies were awful and often being bogarted by individuals who didn't like to share.

But now Tate felt like he was in school. He wasn't sure what he had expected art therapy to be when Dr. Thredson mentioned it, but perhaps something to do with clay or paint. What he had, instead, were colored pencils and a directive to 'draw what you feel'.

He stole a covert look around the room. The other patients were all working. One old man with Turrets' talked to himself but even he was drawing. At the table beside Tate, Violet was drawing a picture of what looked like herself in a field.

Noticing his attention, she smiled. "I'm making you and me, having a picnic in a field. I figure if I draw something boring and normal, whoever looks at these things will know I'm not crazy."

Tate's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "I doubt they'll be that easy to convince but... probably can't hurt."

He looked back to his blank sheet. Though he appreciated art, he wasn't much of an artist himself. He thought about what might be boring and normal but nothing came to mind that he wanted to draw. Finally he gathered a few blues and grays and started to sketch.

Nearly an hour later, when the nurse overseeing the therapy said it was time to put away the supplies, Tate was satisfied with his picture. He'd drawn a bluebird, perched on a branch. It was fluffy with cold, inspired by the freezing cold temperatures in the cells lately. He'd heard rumor someone had actually frozen to death overnight.

The bird wasn't a masterpiece: The eye was too big and the nearest foot was stick-like but in all he was pleased with his work. The feathers were especially nice; they were what he spent the most time on. He'd painstakingly gone over each in a variety of hues. The richness of color added striking dimension to the otherwise sub-par bird.

He added it to the pile of artwork in the bin near the front of the room and paused to admire Violet's when she put it on top of his. Like his, her picture wasn't flawless, but he thought it was beautiful. There they were, sitting on a pleasant hill, enjoying a picnic among the flowers. Violet's detail had gone into the poses of the people and the cloudy sky behind them. The clouds were odd but Tate couldn't quite put his finger on why. Something about them, though, kept drawing his eye. Before he could sort it out, another patient dropped her art on top of Violet's piece.

"Are you ready?" Violet asked, drawing his attention away from the papers.

Her smile drew one from him. "Yeah."

They left the room with the slow trickle of patients that were heading back to the ward.

—

"How long has it been?" Tate asked as he and Violet wandered the halls together. It wasn't stimulating scenery but it was better than having to listen to the Singing Nun again.

"Since our famous run for the border?" she smiled crookedly. "Six weeks? I think." She shrugged. "It's hard to keep track. It's close to that though. We should ask somebody..."

Tate shook his head and sucked on the cigarette they were sharing. "Not right now." He was enjoying his 'alone time' with Violet. He offered her the cigarette.

"Where did they take you?" she asked, taking it and sucking on the filter.

It was Tate's turn to shrug. "Dr. Heath's ward. It's this tripped out underground lair. I think he has three or four patients there still. I don't know who." He looked at her sidelong then. "They got you on meds?"

She made a face and nodded, then handed him the cigarette. "I don't want to take the shit but it's this foul liquid. I can't keep it in my mouth long enough to spit it out someplace."

Tate smoked and tried to think. What had he done with the gross liquid? He couldn't remember. Trying to conjured up a vague impression of Patrick and nothing more. "If it was pills I could help you. I can't even help me right now. They're giving me shots."

"Ohh," Violet expressed sympathetically. "That's a drag." Then she smiled that crooked smile that made her cheek dimple. "I guess we're both stuck being high."

"Could be worse," said Tate. He took a last hit from the cigarette then smushed the butt in one of the many ashtrays the facility had lining the halls. "We could be getting that stuff that makes people make that funny face."

"Still. I'd rather not be on anything at all."

"Yeah. " The blond boy chewed on his lower lip while he percolated a thought. "Which doctor are you seeing?"

"Doctor... um." Violet squinted to remember. "Doctor Thredson."

"I got him too," Tate said, pleased to share something else in common with the girl. "Maybe you could talk to him about your medicine. He's been saying if I do, um, you know. Whatever I'm supposed to? He said he'd take me off the shots."

Violet's brows went up as she considered that. "Yeah, okay. I'll talk to him about it next time I see him. I don't think I'm seeing him for another two weeks though."

"Two weeks?"

She nodded and some of her lank hair fell over her face. She tucked the lackluster lock behind an ear. "Yeah. Why?"

"I guess I thought everybody had to see the shrink weekly," said Tate. "I wonder if it's just me."

"It's overcrowding," Violet theorized. She saw Tate's puzzled look and expanded on that explanation. "When my dad first started working the institutions, he had a patient caseload of like... six patients. He saw them every other day. When I started working here as a candy striper, he had so many patients, he could only see most of them once a week. Only the, uh, the really tricky cases got, um." She realized she might be describing Tate and it made her careful with her words. "Basically only the important cases got the attention they really needed." She smiled and her dimple appeared. "I guess they don't think I'm important enough."

They passed several other patients as they meandered. Many of the ones in the hall were either slumped against the walls—standing or sitting—or they were wandering aimlessly, often talking to themselves. Some ranted. One old lady they passed was naked. Her scrawny body sagged in many places and was bruised in many more. She wasn't doing anything; just standing there in the hall, staring off into space, oblivious to her nudity or the cold air.

"This place does seem pretty crowded," Tate observed. The drugs were slowing his thoughts but he could still count. "When they brought me back from Heath's ward, some other guy was in my room. They moved him but..." He shrugged and couldn't remember if he'd told Violet about the altercation with Dandy over the room. He had a sneaking suspicion he had, so he kept the details minimal and changed the subject. "I heard some of the orderlies are guys on a prison work release program."

Violet's eyes got wide. "I heard that too! Some of them look like prisoners. You know?"

Tate nodded grimly. "Yeah. Trust me, I know. I'm pretty sure Max is one."

"No," said Violet. She picked at a hangnail. "He's not. Jonas and Allain are."

"How do you know?" Tate wasn't challenging her knowledge. He was mystified that she knew so much.

She shrugged. "People talk. It's crazy what they'll say right in front of you."

Tate nodded, remembering his own experiences. "Yeah. It's like you're not even there."

"You're not a person. You're a non-person."

That got a chuckle from him. "Yeah. I don't think anybody here actually thinks of us as people. Except maybe Doctor Thredson."

"My dad," Violet interjected. "Well. He's over in the kids' ward now but that's still here in Briarcliff." She brightened then. "Oh, hey. He sent me something. Want to see it?"

"Sure," Tate agreed. He didn't care what it was. If Violet thought it was share-worthy, he was interested.

"Come on," she said, changing direction. "It's in my room. I'll have to go get it.

—

Tate had to wait for her outside the women's ward since no guys were allowed in there. He found it funny that girls could come to his side of the hospital but boys weren't let the same permission. Why not a single rule for all? It was too arbitrary and silly, to his way of thinking. A guy was just as likely to assault a woman over in the men's ward as he was to do it in the women's ward. It couldn't be about nudity either: Lots of patients in Briarcliff wandered around without a stitch on, regardless of the temperature.

Tate got nowhere on his thought train and was grateful to hop off of it when he saw Violet coming out of the women's hall. She had a black roundish object in her hands and she smiled at him. They headed into the open area where the hall to the wards intersected with the one that led to the common room. She thought about going there but didn't want to share her treasure with the whole room so she moved to a spot by the wall and sat down.

Settling beside her, Tate looked at what she held, with open curiosity. "What is it?"

"It's a zoetrope," she said and lifted it up by its handle so he could see it better. "You look through the side and spin it. When you spin it, the picture inside moves. See?"

She gave it a spin then let him hold it. He took the peg handle and held the thing up so he could see through the slit side as it went around. The merry little clown bobbed up and down and juggled his balls, to Tate's delight.

"I've heard of these!" he said, giving it another spin to keep the clown dancing. "They used to be, like. Television for people before electricity."

He watched the clown bob and gave the cylinder another spin to make him move even faster. Faster and faster the jester bounced till it really looked like he was juggling the balls and jumping up and down like a maniac. The little man's face blurred and distorted with the speed he was giving it, till it almost looked like he was snarling.

Sharp pain sliced through Tate's index finger when he gave the zoetrope another spin and he dropped the toy in surprise. His left finger was bleeding. Impulsively he stuck the digit in his mouth but Violet tugged it right back out again so she could assess the damage.

It wasn't a deep cut but it was a good inch long, right across the tip. "Wrap it in your shirt and put pressure on it," she said, drawing on what limited nursing skills she knew. "Don't suck on it. That's gross."

He did what she said because it made sense. She picked up the fallen zoetrope and he looked sheepish. "Sorry I dropped it," he said. "I guess it had a sharp edge or something. Is it broken?"

Violet gave it cursory examination. The outer cartoon had fallen out, exposing the darker one underneath. She quickly put the happier one back in. She didn't want Tate to see the other one, though she wasn't sure why. "Nothing broken," she smiled. Then she turned it over some more and her expression shifted to puzzlement. "I can't figure out how you cut yourself though. There's nothing sharp. No breaks or anything."

He looked down at the hand he had swaddled in his shirt. "Maybe I pinched it?"

"Maybe," she agreed, willing to leave it at that. But she knew there was nothing on the toy that could pinch like that. "Hey. I was thinking maybe we could make some new cartoon strips for it. You know? Whatever we feel like."

He perked up, liking the idea. "Let's go do that now!"

She smiled, finding his child-like enthusiasm a much-needed bright spot in the dark asylum. The ruddy scar along his hairline made him look every bit the mental patient he was but she still couldn't see him as a killer. Maybe she was as crazy as the doctors said, but it was much more convenient to blame the tumor for the lives he'd taken. The boy who led her to the art table in the commons wasn't like the man who'd terrorized Heather. Despite the heinousness of his crimes, Tate managed to come off as naively innocent. So much so, she hated seeing him in a place like this. He wasn't safe here. Not with people like Max and Sister Jude in charge.

She joined him at the table and they both set to work on short strips for the zoetrope. She smiled and laughed with him, but she was distracted. Her initial plan to escape the hospital had failed largely because Tate's head had hurt so badly. He'd had the surgery now and was seeming much improved, though the drugs made it hard to tell just how improved. Still, they stood a much better chance now... if she could just find a way out.

...

Author's Note:

I'm beginning to realize I made a mistake in trying to make each episode only 6 chapters instead of 7, like I did with my last AHS season. I'm just getting longer chapters. These characters are major stage-hogs. I'm just gonna accept it and let it roll.

That said, next chapter we'll see what Dr. Thredson's been up to. He has a life outside the confines of his office, after all. A very messed up, stressful, bizarre life.