Chapter 37: Be the truth unsaid
The photocopier sputtered in the corner of the empty office – except it wasn't empty, because Vlad had phased his way in almost an hour ago. No one would come and hear the sound of the old Xerox and wonder what was happening: the patient in the room two doors from Vlad's, one floor up and two corridors away, had started screaming at ten in the evening and most of the staff was still over there.
for once Vlad wasn't the one monopolizing everyone's time and care
The other doctor and three nurses were busy keeping an eye on everyone else, ready to intervene if anything caught their attention.
Vlad's room, of course, was silent and calm, and after Ziad had popped in to see if he was doing alright, the rest of the staff shouldn't wander in.
Tonight, all in all, was one of the best times possible to get his medical file and not get caught.
the screams down the corridor the raw screeching the hurried steps of the nurses
Vlad didn't know what was going on with the man in that room, but he couldn't stay in his and listen not to that not to what sounded like one of his worst days in the clinic all night.
Might as well make use of the distraction.
It hadn't been difficult to find his files – locks weren't a problem when you could simply reach inside closed spaces – but it had taken close to forty minutes, just because there were a lot of files in the office's cabinet and Vlad had needed to take them out one by one, check each of them, and then put the wrong files back blindly.
...Vlad could turn himself invisible. Maybe he could turn other things too, and then he would only have needed to hide the filing cabinet itself. Then again, as he wasn't using his human sight...
Ah, well, that line of thought would have to wait.
One more thing to occupy his nights.
It wasn't like Vlad didn't have the time.
When he'd finally found a folder with "Vlad Masters, May 1984/?" written neatly in the corner, it had been three times heavier than even the second largest file – labeled "October 1979/February 1982".
It wasn't surprising. Vlad was... unprecedented. No one before had been blasted in the face with a mix of artificial ectoplasm and pure ecto-energy from the Ghost Zone. No one had spent as long as him as a patient in the clinic. No one had gotten abnormal necrosis on their arms and then recovered from it. No one had survived a grand total of twenty-eight heart attacks and thirty-four cardiac arrests – there was a difference, and Vlad hadn't known that before going through his file – in less than two years. No one had "bonded" with ectoplasm to the point that it'd grown to act "as if" it was his – which it was, but never mind that.
No one vomited more blood than they had in their body on a weekly basis.
and still they didn't know everything
the truth Vlad hoped not to find in this file
The photocopier wasn't done yet, but Vlad could still look through the pages it had already copied. Everything was dark and he couldn't afford to light up the room – there was a limit to what a passing staff member would ignore, and even if Vlad could turn invisible should anyone enter, it would still be suspicious to have a copier working on its own on the file of a patient known to have been possessed by a dormant, malicious ghost – but it didn't matter. If he shifted his eyes, if the reds and pinks and thrumming dark scarlets washed over the other colors, Vlad didn't have to worry about light and darkness.
Ink stood in dull reds against washed-off pink paper.
No one seemed to suspect – he'd known that already, but having the written confirmation, a file exempt of the slightest hint, it wasn't the same. If they'd thought... If they'd realized...
Vlad didn't think they'd even pretend to care anymore, but they could have decided to keep him calm and falsely safe, to watch him and not risk a vengeful ghost roaming through the clinic, not when they could observe instead.
like a most intriguing specimen
one with fangs and dangerous powers one that might turn back and bite them without warning but that could still tell them so much
But they didn't know, and they didn't suspect, and this wasn't happening.
not unless they were also expecting his visit to the doctor's office not unless this was a dummy file not unless
Vlad Masters, to the staff – the doctors, the nurses, Bianco and Ziad – wasn't the ghost. They thought it had waited until it had recovered enough to leave him behind – with all the after-effects of such a long possession – that it had gotten away. That it wasn't coming back.
At least, that they hadn't spotted any signs of it since the incident with June.
Vlad bit his lips and shook his head; they thought it hadn't been his fault either, and they were wrong, he should have done better stayed away from June, not let her get attached. She wouldn't have been so insistent, then, and she wouldn't have gotten hurt.
Whoever had written that part of the file seemed to think he might get haunted more easily than the average person, now, though. Be more interesting to wandering spirits, because of the ectoplasm that had "bonded" with his body. That they might come and seek him out, that the ghost from the "possession" might come back, ineluctably drawn to its former host.
They weren't entirely wrong – if only because, in truth, the ghost was still there.
do you know Vladislav of the beasts wearing faces of men that come in the night and pretend they do not wish to consume humanity to fill their void
No one knew, though.
For them, there was the ghost on one side, and Vlad on the other. They wrote of the entity, the thing, the malevolent spirit. The monster of fangs and red eyes.
It was a good thing for Vlad it meant that part of him was too inhuman for other people but he hadn't needed to read it to know it was monstrous to him too, because they wouldn't connect that description to Vlad the patient. The victim. The person.
but his canines were too long when he didn't pay attention and he was the monster with a blend of scarlet crimson and garnet in his eyes
he hated hated hated hated couldn't help but feel cold and dead at the thought
the beasts wearing faces of men
Vlad couldn't help but wonder what Jack and Maddie would think if they could see him now, if they knew what he had become. If they were here and aware of what Jack had done to him.
they'd never seen ghosts before only had witness accounts and an ectoplasm sample from Minnesota
then again maybe they had found seen studied a ghost now
out there free healthy
had they seen more had they discovered things Vlad hadn't been there for did their life and research move on while he was here because "banzai!" green it hurts it burns
They'd had ideas and hypotheses about what ghosts could really be – past the legends and rumors – but they hadn't known anything for certain, the three of them. Something existed, of that much they had no doubt: they'd worked hard enough to back up their theories in a field most people still considered superstitions or a joke – but its exact nature...
That much remained uncertain, back when the accident had occurred.
Even now, Vlad didn't know anything that hadn't happened to him. He could only assume. Maybe ghosts, as they'd theorized them, didn't exist – maybe it was only people haunted by their own trauma, dead and yet alive just like him, unwilling to expose themselves.
Maybe ghosts were only echoes, or maybe they were individual sentient entities who could actually think and feel and still made the decisions to haunt and harass people who hadn't deserved any of it and in that case...
If that was the case, then Vlad wasn't a proper ghost at all and still knew nothing.
wasn't just a freak amongst humans
but also an abomination of undeath amongst true ghosts
When the ectology master's had been announced at Madison University, just before the end of their respective bachelors, Maddie, Jack and Vlad had found themselves distracted from the courses they'd started with. Maddie had wanted to understand the "how". Jack had wanted to be able to defend everyone from uncaring spirits. Vlad...
Vlad Vlad Vlad Vlad
what had he wanted already? what had it been about? what had motivated him?
why had he gone and gotten involved in all this?
Vlad had Vlad Vlad had wanted...
Vlad had wanted to learn what happened after, how much of the tales was true, what it truly meant. If there was a way to choose. A way to make sure your spirit wouldn't remain chained in eternity. A reassurance that you wouldn't become a monster, if you did everything right.
tales of monsters of dead and cold corpses crawling in the night things that anyone would rather not become horrors haunting those who remained suffering for all eternity and damning others by their very presence
And here he was, not even truly dead and yet already an abomination.
Today, Vlad knew nothing more of real ghosts – or maybe he did, maybe he was one, but he couldn't know, he had no confirmation, no control group, no baseline to compare himself to.
stuck being the exact kind of monster his mother used to tell him and his sister about when the night was falling and it was time to scare the children before a last hug to bed
Vladislav
child
why are you still here?
What would his family say, if they knew the truth? If they knew that Vlad wasn't just sick and broken, but also dead and too stubborn to remain so?
Unable to move on.
The last page of the file spluttered out of the photocopier. Vlad looked at his copy – in the dark, dull reds and pinks – for a long time, before he forced himself to put the original back in the filing cabinet.
he should burn it to ashes
The doctors hadn't made the connection, didn't have any suspicions beyond what they had already shared with him. Destroying his file would bring more attention on Vlad than letting it rest, seemingly untouched. No one knew, they weren't going to tell his parents or Dasha something they hadn't guessed themselves, and the only two people who both knew him well enough to notice a pattern and believed in ghosts past simple superstition weren't...
alone
...weren't there at all.
No, it was better to leave the medical file in the cabinet and hide his copy... somewhere. In his matress, perhaps – literally. Intangibility had its uses.
a secret hidden underneath
present even when he went to sleep
impossible to ignore
first chapter title entirely identical to an earlier chapter's, uh? Don't worry, more are coming for your confusion.