The Haunted
Part 6. The Doctor's Mistake – 594 words
"And you're the lover."
Yuka wears an ominous smile. "Lover. That sounds very strange now."
Subaru holds his ground. He has never argued with a ghost before. Ghosts, spectres and apparitions defy logic. He has always thought so.
"You believe I shouldn't exist."
He starts. "Are you able to read minds?"
She laughs. "You men of science, with all your facts and research— you think everything can be explained by your intellect. You don't realize just how predictable all of you are."
"You've been watching me."
"You've been treating Narumi. Of course I have."
Subaru swallows, as everything clicks into place.
Once, Narumi had raged at him, laughing and crying in frenzy. He had repeatedly pointed around the therapy room, talking about his dead lover and how she was arguing with him at every turn. In the end, Narumi had to be sedated, but even in his sleep he would cry and plead for forgiveness. Subaru had watched him with ill-concealed pity, believing it to be nothing but the ravings of a madman. Clearly, he had been wrong.
"Narumi's stories and everything he had said in his therapy sessions were true. It hadn't been delirium. You truly were haunting him."
"Yes, doctor."
"He could be cured," Subaru realizes, "If you would just leave him alone."
"Perhaps, you may be right. He probably could be."
Yuka's smirk does not fade, and her reply remains cold and detached.
Perhaps it would have been better if Subaru had learned to submit to fear in his youth. If he had done so, back then, he would not have been so careless now. Instead, the curiosity in him succeeds and instead of running away, instead of going for help in a building that was already near deserted, he steps forward to continue conversing with this spirit, this anomaly of science.
"How do you do it?" he asks, a mixture of inquiry and trepidation in his eyes. "How do you hold him the way he is?"
This time Yuka laughs. "I thought you'd never ask."
A sinister glint lights her eyes. She looks straight at Subaru then with a half-shriek she flies from the bed and jumps to him. He barely has time to react. He takes a step back but no further. Yuka phases right through him, disappearing. He suddenly loses control of his arms, as they begin to move to his neck. He starts to strangle himself.
A voice in his head whispers. "How does it feel, doctor? How does it feel, to know that you are not alone in this pitiful mind of yours?"
He feels choked. He struggles.
"How does it feel to be completely at my mercy?"
Subaru falls to the ground, but his own hands continue to attack him.
"Narumi is insane, just as you'll find yourself driven insane before I'm done."
He starts pleading. He has lost all composure and begs her to stop.
"You know too much. You cannot live."
Subaru tries to break free but his efforts are in vain. He eventually falls to his knees on the cold ground and in his mind, he desperately pleads for mercy.
"I never received a second chance before my death and neither will you."
His disembodied grip upon his neck is tightened in a burst of inhuman strength, and Subaru collapses to the ground. In the next minute, he lays on the floor, not breathing.
The good doctor has died.
The heart knows what it wants.
Wisdom always comes too late.
The mind could play tricks on us.
We're servants to our fate.