Meheheheheh…yep, decided to continue.
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When he pulled up to the front door of the historical society, the fog had cleared, leaving the town normal. Claudia was standing by the door, plainly waiting as much as she tried to play it off. He chose to ignore her, retrieving the duffel bag of books and papers, and walking nonchalantly up the walk, heedless of the dents and bloodstains on his car.
She watched him come up the walk, a smug smile spreading. "Welcome home, Vincent." It wasn't a friendly greeting, it was gloating.
He paused in the doorway, then chose not to respond, heading for the library room instead, to replace the books before he got some rest.
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The next morning, sitting in the driver's seat of his car, he flipped open a small pocket notepad, revising his notes on what was and wasn't important or relevant information. Several of the urban legends and rumors he'd been hearing had the "irlvnt" tags scratched out, replaced by scribbled ballpoint stars. Four of the new starred entries related to a nurse he'd lent a sympathetic ear to at the café down the street more than once, and her tales of one particularly problematic patient.
He parked outside the hospital; it was a bright, clear, warm day, with just enough breeze to keep the air moving. He never failed to be amazed at how much pleasant weather the town had; to someone just passing through, an average photo of main street would be worth putting on a postcard to send home. It was quite insidious, knowing what he knew of the town's politics.
He carried nothing more than his tape recorder and notebook as he walked into the ward for long-term and terminally ill patients, entering through a side door. Avoiding security was mostly a matter of watching for their attention to be on something else and simply walking past as if he belonged there, a background element; as long as he didn't show any reaction, he was fine.
He wandered around the wing like that until he saw a brunette nurse checking over a clipboard tiredly; walking up behind her, he tapped her on the shoulder. "Nancy?"
She jumped, then gave him a bleary, tired, half-lidded regard, as if trying to place his presence as something real. "Vincent? What're you doing here?"
"I'm on historical society business. You'd been talking about having a patient whose family has been in this area for generations?" He gave a long enough pause for her to nod. "I was wondering if I'd be able to speak to her."
"You want to talk to Mary?" she squinted at him. "I don't think you'll get much out of it, she's not really stable."
He gave a congenial smile. "Well, I'll just have to try my luck, then, if it wouldn't trouble you any."
She checked her watch and thought it over. "Just for a few minutes, alright? Try not to upset her." She led him down the hallway, around a corner, to one of the narrow white window-set doors; opened it just enough to stick her head in.
"Mary? There's someone from the Historical Society here to see you. Should I let him in?"
He heard a weak, "Go ahead, not like I have anything better to do.", from inside the room; Nancy pulled the door open and waved him in.
The lady in the bed was thin to frailty, long mousy brown hair spreading limp around her face. Her face was sickly, fishbelly white, blotched, with her eyes sunken and dark. Her hands were folded over her stomach, and if not for the faint movement of breathing and the flicker of her eyes tracking him, he'd think he was looking at a badly embalmed corpse someone had forgotten to put in a casket. An IV line ran into her wrist from its stand, tubes in her nose running to a machine awkwardly wedged in between the bed and the wall next to the window, which was open, the breeze stirring the edges of the curtains. There was an alarm clock on the nightstand, a stack of yellowed paperbacks, the remote for the small TV that was silent in its stand near the ceiling, a small forest of propped-up cards all in the same handwriting crowding the vase.
His eyes flickered to the charts hanging on the nightstand, and the name in block typewriter print at the top.
"Mary Shepherd-Sunderland?"
"Yes?", she rasped.
He set down his notebook and tape recorder teetering on a bare edge of the nightstand, offering his hand. "My name is Vincent Lingham. I work at the Historical Society, and was wondering if I could talk to you about your family history."
She closed her eyes. "Don't pity me."
"Come again?" He lowered his hand.
"When you walked in, it was written all over your face, how you carried yourself. It's one of the worst parts of being here; everyone pities you, until it's like you're more some caged dog with mange than a human being." Her voice must've been pretty once, now ground and beaten by the illness.
"I'm sorry."
"You want to know about my family? They're a bunch of vultures, all praying I die before the hospital bills take too much out of my share of the estate. Two years and not so much as a card. All moved south so they'd have an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for me. It's like I eloped in reverse." She spoke as if she'd bitterly accepted it long ago, and it'd become rote fact.
"I'm sorry for that too."
One eye cracked open, gaze falling back on him. "Why are you apologizing for that?"
"Well, the people that owe you the apology aren't apparently, so I may as well."
Her brow furrowed, studying him. "Aren't you going to tell me you're sure it's not that bad, you're sure they care about me?"
"I'm afraid that I haven't been that much of an optimist about human nature for a long time." He tapped the nearest card with his pen, retrieving and flipping open his notebook. "And there'd be more than one signature on these if your family were paying more attention."
She chuckled drily, sounding like a faulty coffee grinder, and closed her eye again, almost as if asleep. "Well, then, Mister Lingham, what did you want to ask me about?" It was an alias anyway.
"Please, just call me Vincent."
"Vincent then."
"How much do you know about the fire about twenty years ago?"
"The fire, hmmm? Well, I've heard quite a bit about it, but not from my family…they weren't here for it." The eyelid slid open again, and he was suddenly aware that he was being studied. "Car trouble recently?"
The pen point hit the side of the notebook, sliding a long, thin trial of ink from a stabbed dot. "What do you mean, car trouble?"
"Aaah…so you're…. that Vincent." Another rusted, crackling chuckle.
He set the pen and pad down in his lap, took off his glasses, and started cleaning them quietly. "Come again? I'm afraid I don't have a clue what you're getting at."
"Your car must not be in that great a shape after your little adventure. She told me aallll about it."
He froze, cloth still folded over his glasses. "She?"
"My little angel…or devil." She turned her head, just enough to fix both eyes on him. "They're the same thing in the end, aren't they?" He put the cloth away and put his glasses on, taking a minute to get them setting right on the bridge of his nose. "She's one of the ones that comes in here to talk…I tell them stories…the doctors told me they're not here, but that's just because they can't see them."
"How do you know I'm not going to tell you the same thing?"
"Because you've talked to her. She said you were an interesting one."
He was beginning to feel vaguely unsettled. She was on multiple drugs for the illness, likely mildly delirious from the illness, and possible crazy on top of it; but she knew about the other night…
The door opened, but Nancy only barely got her head in the door before Mary let out a blood-curdling scream and threw the empty vase; it shattered on the door as Nancy flinched out of the way, spraying water and bits of broken ceramic everywhere, while Mary shrieked about "Monsters! All of you monsters! Don't come anywhere near me, anywhere at all!!" He stood up, stepping back, trying to figure out what he'd done or said that might've triggered the outburst; when he moved, she seemed to remember his presence. "You! You're from the Historical Society, you're working with them, aren't you?!" Before he could give any kind of stunned response, she'd thrown his tape recorder at him, hitting him hard in the chest; he put a hand up to keep it from falling and hurried out, shutting the door behind him while she continued screaming and thrashing.
He fell back against the wall, thrown off. Nancy had taken up one of the empty chairs across the hall and was just watching the door, glancing at her watch occasionally.
"Does this happen often?"
"Fraid so."
"You have my apologies if it was anything I said…"
She waved a hand, dismissing it. "It's impossible to tell what'll trigger her fits; the most we can do is stay out of the way. We've tried settling her down, even drugging her, but it only seems to make it worse when she comes out of it."
"Ah…is this a bad time?" It'd somewhat registered that someone else was there, but now Vincent realized that the nervous-looking man had stopped by them, addressing Nancy. He had dusty blonde hair combed back short, a threadbare green jacket, plain jeans and street clothes, and was holding a bundle of white lilies, shifting his weight from foot to foot in something between fear and embarrassment.
"Well, she did throw the vase at me, but it should die down enough for her to recognize you in…oh…twenty minutes, give or take, depending on what the doctors decide to do - they've probably already overheard this."
"Oh…." He looked down at the flowers. "I guess I should get another vase while I'm waiting then…"
"You might want to rethink the lilies, too…she's been in a morbid mood again."
"Right…I'll be back in a little bit." He sighed dejectedly, dusting the floor with his shoes as he walked back out, slumped.
"I suppose…that would be the one leaving the cards?" Vincent nodded toward the retreating figure.
Nancy nodded. "That's her husband, James…real sweetheart, one of the most long-suffering people on the planet. He gets the worst of it sometimes, and never seems to let it bother him; I don't think he's got a malicious bone in his body."
"I'll be going then, I suppose…thank you for the time, and I hope I didn't cause any trouble."
"Don't worry about it…just remember to sign out on your way out." She sighed, already settled into waiting, watching the door.
He got halfway through the hallway when something dark crept into the edges of his vision; he stopped and blinked, thinking to get it out. Instead, when he opened his eyes, the entire hallway had changed; the lights guttered dimly, dried blood and other nameless stains covered the wall, the floor tiles rotted and were broken up, and the nurse that'd been checking a chart down the hall had turned toward him, head hanging down in front of her brokenly, skin pale, clammy, diseased, the color of a dead fish, boils running down the twisted neck, uniform stained to a dingy rust-tainted grey from white, one hand clutching a needle long enough to kill with. He blinked again, and the hallway was back to normal, brightly lit, and the nurse was walking away.
Was that the world Mary saw when she had her fits? Was she seeing the same place as the dark vision he'd had on the road…or was he just going as crazy as the woman still screaming behind him?
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I figure Vincent's last name is an alias anyway, and …well, it's the first thing that occurred to me that seemed to stick, after a long period of staring at my PDA screen blankly.
Gotta love Alchemilla hospital….