Awakening (27 page)

“
It might be a good idea if
we found another way out. I don’t like the look of that crowd,”
Luke said, his grip tightening around my hand.

The crowd, which was starting to look
more like a mob, began to move in our direction. Luke pulled me
with him, and we high tailed it down the hallway in the opposite
direction. We picked up speed as we went and by the time we hit the
flight of stairs we were jogging. At the bottom of the stairs, we
went through another set of doors and Luke pulled up.

“
We’re in the basement.”
Luke gestured to the left. ”We’re right next to the parking lot,
once out the door we’re only a few feet from the car.”

I nodded my head and sucked in a
lungful of air. I hadn’t been prepared to run a marathon around the
hospital.

Luke started down the hall. “Wait
here, I’m going to check to make sure there isn’t another welcoming
party waiting for us outside.”

I leaned against the wall, more like
sagged against it, watching, waiting for him to let me know it was
safe to leave.

I didn’t realize at first what the
noise was. It wasn’t until the buzzing sound increased a few
notches that I noticed it at all. The sound was coming from a room
to my left. My legs started down the hallway before my mind caught
up with what I was doing, and I found myself standing in front of a
set of large metal doors. Above the doors in bold black letters was
the word--Morgue. Before I could truly process what was going on, I
had pushed through the doors and gone into the room.

Why had I come into the morgue? I
could speak to spirits now--the last place I wanted to be was in a
room full of dead bodies. I looked around, expecting to have a face
or voice pop out at me at any minute. The air in the room was
chilly, cold enough I could see my breath. The space was enormous.
Small metal doors with metal handles lined one wall. I realized I
was looking at the drawers where they kept the dead
bodies.

What the heck was I doing here? What
strange urge had propelled me through those doors? I should turn
around and march out, but instead my feet seemed glued to the
floor. I twisted around and took in the rest of the room. Against
another wall was a large sink. I shuddered at the visual of what
might go down that drain. Blood? Tissue? I force myself to look
away. Shiny black tile covered the floors, and four metal tables
about waist high stood in the middle of the room. White sheets
covered two of the tables, but the sheets weren’t lying flat
against the tables’ surface. Something was under each sheet. Dead
bodies. Dead bodies were lying on the tables.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise--I
was in the morgue, but at the thought that there were dead bodies
just a few feet away, I felt a totally irrational urge take me
over, I had to see the bodies. I don’t know why the thought crossed
my mind to look at the bodies, but once it did I felt compelled to
take one step, and then another, toward the tables. I realized I
wasn’t full of dread or fear. I should have been, but instead I
felt empty.

My mother had been a healer, and I had
seen dead bodies before. I had in the past, when confronted with
the dead, felt sadness, a heavy mourning for the loss of life. The
person that passed no longer had the chance to feel the breeze on
their face, they would never again hold a loved one in their arms.
Death, loss, sadness these were things that I had been trying to
come to terms with as I took on the role of a healer. I had watched
my mother fight against death--do battle to save her patients’
lives. And yet, I had just moments earlier helped someone die. I
had forced Anna to the other side. I kept waiting for remorse to
set in, kept waiting to feel regret, but I didn’t. I just felt
numb.

Not completely numb, a sudden
undeniable urge to see what was under that sheet washed over me.
The urge was so strong, I wondered if something was controlling me,
but even as I had the thought, I couldn’t seem to stop myself as my
hand reached out and grabbed a corner of the material. One hard
pull and the cloth fell away.

The body on the table was a man’s. I
couldn’t tell his age. Something had crushed part of his skull in.
On one side of his head was a gaping hole--a mess of protruding
white bones and red tissue. The other half was still intact. I
could make out a straight nose, a wide mouth with pleasantly shaped
lips and one good eye. He was naked under the sheet, but thankfully
I had only pulled part of it down, the sheet lay bunched up against
his stomach. There were no other injuries, at least that I could
see. His arms, his hands, his chest seemed fine. Whatever had
happened to him, the trauma had only impacted his head. How had he
died? Was it fast? Did he have time to realize what was happening?
As I was asking the question in my head, my body inched forward and
my hand reached out, and I touched him.

I don’t know why I did it, but I
couldn’t seem to help myself. My hand acted almost on its own. My
fingers brushed against cold clammy skin, and as my fingers made
contact with him a bright orange light flashed, more like it
exploded. The light was so bright I was momentarily blinded and
with the light came a rush of sound and a barrage of images. I
stumbled back, falling almost to the ground. When I got back on my
feet I looked at the table and something totally unexpected was
happening. The dead man was slowly sitting up. I blinked trying to
take in what I was seeing--my mind was reeling with what was
happening.

The dead man sat up, and his lips
began to move. “Girly, where am I?” It was Wanda’s voice. Wanda’s
voice was coming out of the mouth of the corpse on the
table.

“
Girly, what’s going on?”
The corpse’s hand lifted and began to frantically wave around. “I
made it, I’m back with the living again!”

I backed up and spun around, falling
flat against the second body. I scrambled away, but as I moved part
of the sheet came with me. My hands grazed across a cold cheek.
There was the exploding light again, another rush of images and
noise.

The second body was a woman. Her head
was all there, but she was missing an arm. It looked as though it
had been ripped off, the edges were jagged, and pieces of flesh
were hanging down. I watched as the woman’s eyes popped open. Her
mouth moved, opening wide, and she let out an unworldly
scream.

My hands went to my ears. I backed up,
and backed up some more until I fell against something
solid.

Strong arms encircled me, and Luke’s
voice spoke into my ear, “What have you done!”

Me? What had I done? I hadn’t done
anything. I had just walked into the room. I had looked at the
bodies, barely touched the bodies. Whatever was happening had
nothing to do with me. Did it?

Wanda’s voice screamed out, “Girly,
undo it. I take it back! I don’t want to be alive no more, not in
this rotten body!” The man’s body tumbled from the table onto the
floor.

The woman’s body was rising. She was
getting up off the table. The sheet dropped onto a pile on the
floor. She was completely naked. A large jagged open wound ran down
her left leg. The cut was so deep I could see all the way to the
bone. Pieces of tendon flapped dangling down from the wound. The
woman’s eyes focused on us, and she let out another eardrum busting
screech. She took an awkward step, her good arm reaching out toward
us.

And there was Wanda’s voice again,
moaning from the floor. “Girly, what’ve you done to me?” The body
on the floor was moving, inching forward, trying to rise. I could
hear finger nails scratching and digging against the
tile.

These things seemed focused on us.
They were moving closer in our direction. Could they hurt us? I
didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

Apparently Luke felt the same. He
shoved me behind him and yelled, “Move!”

Out the door we both scrambled. I
stood in the hallway, not sure which way to run, and that’s when
the mob appeared around the corner. They must have been searching
for us throughout the hospital. By the looks on their faces they
weren’t about to give us a warm reception. At the end of the
hallway was a sign with the word ‘exit’ in large red letters. I
started toward the sign, Luke close behind me. I couldn’t help but
look over my shoulder and what I saw made me stop in my tracks. The
mob had seen us and was following, but as they passed the morgue
they ran smack dab into the dead bodies. High pitched screams were
followed by a frantic scrambling for weapons. A handful of members
of the mob were now wailing on the dead bodies with IV stands and
oxygen tanks.

I could hear Wanda’s yells of, “Help
me, get off me, you idiots.” Echoing down the hall.

I don’t know how long I
would have stood there looking on in astonishment at the rumble,
but Luke grabbed my arm and pulled and we
both ran flat out down the hallway and out of the hospital. I
came to a halt only when my fingers gripped the handle of the car
door.

Luke opened the driver’s door and slid
in. He unlocked the car, and I jumped in. Before I could speak he
had the car started, and we moved down the street.

“
What happened back there?”
I asked, still breathless.

Luke didn’t answer.

I spoke louder this time. “I wasn’t
hallucinating. You saw it, right?”

Luke turned and gave me a brief look.
“Why did you go into the morgue?”

I sat staring out the window trying to
make sense of what I had just seen. “I don’t know why, but I felt
compelled to go inside.”

“
Was there anyone else in
there?” Luke asked.

“
No, the place was empty
except for the bodies.”

“
You didn’t feel any
spirits?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t. I just
felt this urge to go in and then I had to see what was under the
sheet.” How could I explain the strong desire that filled me at
that moment. “I didn’t mean to lift the sheets, I didn’t mean to
touch them.”

“
You touched them, and they
came alive?” Luke sounded shocked.

We’d been through a lot together, but
up until this point, with all the strange stuff that had happened,
nothing had fazed Luke. His shock meant that whatever was going on
was bad. How did those bodies come alive?

“
That was Wanda’s voice I
heard coming out of the dead man’s mouth.” I paused and took a deep
breath. “I know it was Wanda, the spirit that had possessed me
during the second ritual.”

Luke shook his head. “Impossible.
Restless spirits possess the living, not the dead.”

“
It was her!” I’d never
forget her voice, that terrifying moment when she’d whispered to me
in the darkness. It was Wanda, I was sure of it. She’d even called
me ‘girly.’

“
I heard the scream that’s
how I found you.” Luke looked in the rear view mirror.

Did he think they were following us?
Could they? “That scream sounded like one of your
banshees.”

“
Impossible. Those bodies
were dead. All you did was touch them. You didn’t say any words,
you just touched them?”

“
No words, my fingers
grazed across their skin and then I saw a bright orange light, and
there was noise. Images that rushed by, I’m not sure what the
images were. It all happened too fast.”

“
A bright orange light?”
Luke demanded.

I nodded my head. “So bright it
blinded me.”

“
That sounds like death
dealer magic. But how could the dead come alive?”

I realized Luke wasn’t asking me the
question, he was asking himself, but I answered anyway. “Not alive,
they were possessed.”

“
Impossible!” Luke pulled
the car over to the side of the road and turned off the ignition.
We sat there on the side of the road, neither one of us talking for
a long while. When Luke finally spoke he said, “I remember my
grandfather talking about an old folktale.” He tapped his finger on
the steering wheel. “What was it? The old man used to tell us old
stories. Bed time stories to scare us…” He slapped the steering
wheel. “It was a Draugr!”

I raised an eyebrow and waited for him
to continue.

Luke turned and looked at me. “The
Viking’s believed Draugrs were ghosts that animated the bodies of
the dead. These things could roam around. They could devour
people’s flesh. They would cause anyone around them for too long to
go insane.”

This time I was the one sounding
shocked. “You’re saying they were Draugrs, something like
zombies?”

“
There are no such things
as zombies,” Luke answered.

He could say that all he wanted, I had
just watched a man with a gaping hole in his face crawl across the
morgue floor. “And spirits can’t possess the dead, yet I swear
Wanda was in that man’s body.” What happened to the bodies after we
left? Were they still making their way out of the morgue? “Should
we have left them there?”

“
What would you suggest we
do with them?” Luke asked.

“
I don’t know, buy an axe,
go back and chop off their heads.” That’s what they did with
zombies in the movies.

Luke’s expression turned serious.
“I’ve never seen or heard of that kind of magic. I don’t even know
if they are Draugrs. Draugrs are just something old folks tell the
children to keep them from roaming the streets at night. Old
bedtime horror stories that they tell in order to scare and
entertain gullible children.” He looked thoughtful for a moment and
then shook his head. “They can’t be Draugrs. There are no such
things.”