AN: Happy Friday everyone, hope you enjoy the chapter. If you like the writing (or don't) maybe leave a review, feedback is always appreciated.
***17***
I dove across the ground just in time to slide under a rusted frame covered by a moldy mattress. I barely had time to pull my legs under before the clattering of bare feet across splintered wood came rushing around the corner.
The mad men howled wordless sounds and didn't bother checking in my hiding spot.
I waited just long enough for them to twist around the next corner before scraping myself off the floor and sprinting the opposite direction. I got maybe four steps in before the floor and walls melted away. The gray-green halls of rot distorted and dripped and I fell through the mess only to find more festering shreds of building.
Twisting and turning I reached for something to grab, anything to stop the free fall.
My leg twisted around something cold and hard. Another Chilling grasp ripped at my shoulder. I wretched this way and that. I saw them. Coming out of that walls. Arms, brown with rot and coated in angry red blood. Faces, twisted in agony and shrieking: "come back!" "you did this!" "More. More!"
I struggled, flailing in any way I could. Jagged bones ripped through the walls, plunging into me for every move I made.
Something different and warm brushed against my shoulder.
On reflex I flinched away from that too.
"Mister Upshur! Hey, hey wake up."
I opened my eyes only for visions of gray and red and green and brown to be washed away by a flat black.
"Mister Upshur, are you ok?" It was doctor Sutton.
I gave myself a minuet to breath again. Every time I closed my eyes the nightmares came barreling in, it didn't matter how many sedatives they pumped into me.
"I'm just peachy"
Something warm was still blooming across my back.
"You're bleeding" Dr. Sutton told me flatly from the bedside.
"Did I rip a stitch again?" This was what, the fifth time? Sixth?
"It looks like it. Was it the nightmares again?" there was a hint of concern to her voice.
No, I was just flailing around because it seemed like a nice way to spend the morning.
"Don't worry about it. It was nothing" I said instead.
I could hear her moving around the room, checking machines, adjusting IVs. She's been doing daily checks on me for, how long had it been? Two weeks now?
"You know, if you talk about what's bothering you, it may not bother you so much." She was wearing that grandmotherly voice again.
Sure, that'll work. Don't mind me, I just get flashbacks to an insane asylum that I broke into about a year ago. Oh, and I'm also haunted by the memories of the nearly hundreds of people I've killed. Have I mentioned that I was host to a demon beyond our understanding and was getting hunted down by three others? No? Oh right, of course I haven't, because that would be insane.
"Just let it go."
"Suit yourself then," she jotted down a few notes on the clipboard she seemed to carry at all times "it's about time that we started you on an exercise regimen, we don't want anything to start atrophying on us."
"Whatever you say doc." the last time I had a doctor asking me to do something it meant a week of hell on earth.
I tried to suppress a shiver.
"I'm going to touch your arm" Dr. Sutton told me, less than a second her cold hands were on my shoulder and starting to shift my stiff limb "your back is healing about as well as can be expected, but it's still pretty rough."
I tried to adjust myself on the bed. I got about halfway to sitting up before my back locked up. Doctor Sutton was quick to give me a hand and help me the rest of the way. A month ago I had been turning men into putty, now I needed help to sit up. This was pathetic.
"Here, try moving your arm in circles, like this." the doctor moved my remaining arm in little clockwise loops. Most of the muscle leading to my shoulders creaked and groaned in protest.
"There you go. Try to do a few circles whenever you're feeling up to it."
Once upon a time I could have ripped a door off it's hinges with this arm. Now I quivered at the thought of raising it.
"Are you sure there's nothing eating at you?"
"I'm fine."
If I were in a better mood I would have tried to be more convincing.
A short silence told me that the doctor didn't believe that for a second.
"Well," she spoke in spite of the heavy silence "if you're feeling up to it we can start trying to walk when you get more comfortable moving your upper body."
Oh, right because that would was going to happen any time soon. The weight of the cast around my leg started nagging at me. I'd ended up fracturing that too. It probably should have been worse than it was but the dreamer that tackled me took the brunt of the force from Matts truck. The fact that I walked away from the collision in relatively good shape wasn't lost on anyone, especially not detective Schafer. It didn't seem like a day went by without him dropping by and prying for information.
"Miles? How does that sound? Taking a walk?"
A stray memory of the same question in different circumstances buzzed by. A wheelchair. A Murkoff executive gone mad. Giant scissors.
"Sure, a walk. Sounds great." I spoke more to the room in general than to the doctor in particular.
Before Sutton had the chance to say anything else there was a firm knock at the door.
"Come in" Sutton answered the knock quickly.
The door swung open on it's mostly silent hinges.
"Am I interrupting anything?" It was the detective. I was wondering what was taking him so long, he was usually here to bother me by noon, but it was past two.
"Oh no, I was just leaving to do the rest of my rounds" Sutton stepped away from me and into the hall "you have a nice day detective, and Miles, don't forget about those exercises"
"Don't worry doc, I'll keep it up" even I heard how unconvincing I sounded.
At any rate it must have been good enough because Schaefer stepped into the room and clicked the door shut behind him. He took his usual spot in the chair next to the bed.
"Ok Miles, I know I've been in here nearly every day, and I know you keep saying you don't know anything, but I need to ask one more time. Is there anything you can tell me about what happened to you?" He sounded more tired than he had the past few days. Could I hear him scratching at some unshaven stubble?
"Did something happen?" there was no way he was just acting like he's been up half the night.
He was on the verge of yelling "I just," he calmed himself "I just need to know what's going on
Wow, way to be cryptic.
"What do you mean by that?"
He shuffled in what I assumed was annoyance "I mean we have a dead officer and what looks like a home invasion. I also mean that we found a building that was half way destroyed a mile off the highway where you here hit. It's not just you any more, people are dieing. Tell me what you know." the chair scraped the ground behind him as he stood up. The bed shook slightly when he leaned against the edge of it.
Thoughts of charred fingers shredding my back and swampy limbs twisting through my organs traced their way through my mind. The beeping of machines next to me seemed to come and go as tiny shrieks and howls. I had to fight to keep this morning's breakfast where it belonged.
"Miles! Don't you check out on me, this is important." the bed shook slightly under him as he spoke.
I ripped my attention back to the room before I started reliving anything else.
"What happened?"
"I already told you. A home invasion, an officer down. Stop stalling"
The idiot didn't understand what he was getting himself into.
"I'm not, it's just. Ok look" I couldn't just say what was going on outright, that wouldn't be believable and would probably just get me thrown into some kind of asylum, "I was looking into Murkoff, and next thing I know I was in the middle of frozen farm land, sans arm. So it probably has something to do with them."
"See Miles, I want to believe that. Really I do, but I was doing some of my own research, and Murkoffs gone. Anyone who made it above regional manager ended up dead or worse, hell their CEO was murdered in a hospital less than a month ago. I find it hard to believe that you're looking into a dead mega-corporation. Especially one that never operated in Des Moines." Schaefer had regained some composure, but was getting into what sounded like more like an interrogation than a conversation.
Watch yourself Miles.
"Well, that's what I was trying to figure out. Who's been offing Murkoff. I mean, saying they were unliked is an understatement, but who did they piss off enough to make murdering everyone seem like a good idea?"
"Are you trying to tell me that you found evidence of a serial killer?" The detective sounded more critical of what I'd said than accepting of it.
"That or a group of people. That's what I was looking into actually. I had finally gotten a lead that lead me here and next thing I know…" I let the sentence trail off, the conversation had come full circle.
The detective didn't seem to buy it though. If I could still see I'm sure I would have found him narrow eyed and staring at me.
"If what you're saying is true, and I don't think it is, then why would this Murkoff hating group target you?"
I shrugged, much to the dismay of my back, "Who knows. Crazy people do what they want. Besides, it's my job to figure what people are doing, not why they're doing it."
"Where did you say you were from?" The change in subject threw me off more than I should have let it.
"I move all over, but keep an apartment in Washington." that used to be true.
"Out of state. That's convenient. And, which paper were you with?"
"I told you I freelance." where was he going with this?
"You have to sell your stories to someone."
"Mostly Rocky Mountain News, South Idaho Press, a couple of small name papers."
He got silent for a second, there was the smallest sound of someone tapping against a phone screen.
"It looks like the two that you said went out of business a couple of years ago."
"Are you googling my answers?" what the hell?
"Out of business means it's pretty hard to corroborate your story. Thats pretty convenient for you isn't it?"
"Why are you suddenly on my case so much. Don't you have a murderer to go find?"
"I know that you're not telling me everything." Schaefer had calmed down only a little, it was obvious that he didn't want to believe a word that came out of my mouth.
"You have a phone in your hand, look up what happened at the Chicago courthouse during the CEO's trial." Schaefer went about tapping against his phone as I spoke, "after the initial attack on the building there was a car crash in the courtyard. At least two died, who knows how many were injured. There was something there. Weather it was just someone out looking for revenge or an escaped patient, who knows. But I think that whoever was there is the same person who's here now."
There was a moment of silence form Schaefer while I read whatever article he had found.
"Best case scenario were just dealing with a disgruntled family member, but I think this was the doing of an escaped patient."
"Mount Massive happened over a year ago, there's no way some rogue patient is still out there"
"That's what I thought, but the more I looked into it the more likely that seemed, and now that I got beat to hell and back it seems like the most likely case."
There was more heavy silence before the detective spoke. He had to be buying at least some of my story. I was telling mostly-true lies, so if he was really looking into it he'd see that I was right. If I was lucky he might even find a way to get rid of the dreamers for me.
For a second I could feel my missing left arm and nearly see the Chicago courtyard again. A slug of hot lead ripped through the things twigish body, twisting its withered frame in on itself and sending the monster scurrying into the sewers.
Maybe hoping that Schaefer could fix the problem was wishful thinking.
The shuffle of plastic on fabric told me that the detective was putting his phone back in his pocket.
"I have some eyewitness reports to read. I'll be back, and don't think that I believe your story, not completely at least."
"Thanks for the confidence detective"
He wasn't leaning against the bed frame anymore, but I could feel a glare settle on me.
"Have a nice day, mister Upshur."
His steps were a bit heavier than they had been, whether from fatigue or anger, I couldn't tell.