Coldhearted (9781311888433) (31 page)

“
What was that?” Jules
asked, but more to herself, sounding scared and excited at the same
time.

“
What?” Gunnar asked, and
then exited Lavinia’s room, now standing in the hallway. He turned
his camera on Jules, then in the direction her camera was in,
looking down the dark hall. “What’d you see?”

“
Nothing,” Jules said, “but
I heard something.”

They were all in the hallway now, their
cameras pointing in the same direction. Everything was bathed in
green.

Quinn was standing beside Edie. “Was it a
door creaking or something like that?” he asked Jules.

“
Yeah,” she said, nodding.
“You heard it too?”

“
Yeah,” he said back, “but
it wasn’t exactly a door, I don’t think.”

“
C’mon,” Amee urged. “We’ll
never know until we start investigating.”

Gunnar led the group, with everyone following
behind, Edie and Quinn at the rear. Edie’s view was blocked by the
others in front of her, so she turned around and aimed her camera
toward the other end of the hallway.

They weren’t alone. Tall as a man with broad
shoulders, the shadow figure was facing her, eyes glowing white in
the gloom.

Her hands were trembling, but she managed to
compose herself. “Uh, guys? There’s someone staring at me.” She
could hear rather than see everyone turn around. Now she was the
one in front, the leader.

“
What is it?” Gunnar asked,
from the back.

She told them what (or more precisely who)
she was seeing. The shadow figure with illuminated eyes had yet to
move. Despite this, Edie’s heart beat even faster.

“
This is your chance, Edie,”
Quinn encouraged. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Ask
him about your ghost.”

“
Uh, okay, um…do you see any
other ghosts?” She raised the pitch of her voice, considering the
shadow figure—to her relief—was still standing at the end of the
hall. “Do you see one with me right now?”

Dead silence.

“
Try the recorder,” Jules
suggested.

“
Oh, yeah,” Edie said. Quinn
handed it back to her. She fumbled for the record button, and then
repeated her questions, adding, “Do you know how to make a ghost go
away? Can you tell me how to detach a ghost?” She waited a few
seconds for the shadow to answer, then pushed stop, and looked over
her shoulder at everyone. “Do y’all see that shadow?”

Bree said, “No—wait, oh yeah, I do. Wow. He’s
just standing there.”

Everyone else then confirmed that they were
seeing the shadow man too.

Edie turned back to face the hall in front of
her and discovered the shadow man was starting to move. “Uh,
guys?”

“
Yeah, yeah, I see it,”
Gunnar said. She could hear him making his way through the crowd.
He was now behind her. “Play back your recorder, Edie.”

The shadow man was moving but in slow motion.
Edie’s hands were shaking. Quinn helped her again and pushed play.
There were several seconds of silence, until a voice that didn’t
belong to any of them, came through:

“
Ghosts?” the shadow man
repeated with a hint of disbelief. “There’s only one ghost
here…girlie girl.” He chuckled. “Oh, Edie, how stupid you are, how
easily you’ve been played. You should’ve listened to Mason. He told
you this was all a trick. There is no ghost community. There is no
knowledge of how to rid me from your life. I’m yours and you’re
mine. We’ll be together forever, Edie.” Tristan paused, and then
continued, “Let’s have a little fun, shall we?”

Edie dropped the recorder when the shadow man
came rushing at her, swooping in like a bird of prey. She ducked,
afraid it was full of teeth and talons, and crouched on the floor,
hearing a chorus of screams all around her. She was attacked by
hands, groping and grabbing, fondling and pinching, and slithering
its fingers like cold snakes across her skin.

She didn’t have her necklace to comfort her,
but she thought of that island, its clear blue waters and the
yellow sun, and she regained some composure, some relief, against
Tristan’s attack.

“…
deliver us from evil,” she
recited, finishing the Lord’s Prayer, as she waited to be
saved.

“
Edie?!”

The voice was familiar, full of panic. It was
Quinn. He found her on the floor and helped her up. She turned her
camera on him. His eyes were wide, frightened.

“
Are you okay?” she
asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, are you?”

She nodded back, and then looked around for
the others. “Where’s everyone?”

Quinn realized that they were alone. “They
must have fled. I would have too, but I felt like I was being
pinned down by some unseen force. And I was shivering, cold, almost
paralyzed.” He shook his head at the memory of it. “C’mon, let’s go
find them.”

As Edie and Quinn walked side by side down
the dark hallway, their free hands found each other and they held
on, interlacing their fingers. It wasn’t romantic. They were
holding onto each other because they were afraid. She’d given
herself orders before she’d arrived that she wouldn’t show any
fear, but that was nearly impossible when a scary poltergeist was
charging full speed ahead at you.

“
Gunnar?! Rory?! Jules?!
Amee?! Bree?!”

Quinn had been shouting their names down
every hallway that they’d turned, but he’d been met with silence.
After many twists and turns, they somehow had crossed from the main
building to one of the extended wards. The sign above the door
read: Crematorium.

“
Just great,” Quinn
said.

Still holding her hand, he turned them back
around, but the door they’d come through was now suddenly
locked.

“
It’s Tristan,” Edie said,
unnecessarily. She sighed loudly, hugged the wall, and slid down on
the dirty floor, bringing Quinn with her. They sat in the dark. “I
should’ve known better. I should’ve listened to Mason. He told me
that Tristan was just playing tricks on me, making me believe that
he was afraid of this place, when in fact, he’s not afraid of
anyplace or anyone.” She knocked the back of her head against the
wall. “I’m doomed. I’ll never be rid of him and he knows it. Game
over.”

Quinn squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll
get through this. First, we have to get out of this place, and then
we’ll ghost-bust this Tristan jerk.”

“
Oh, with what?” she asked
sarcastically. “You’ve got a proton pack I’m unaware
of?”

Quinn chuckled.
“
Ghostbusters
reference—nice—but no, I don’t. Wish I did, though.” He
paused, and then said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about your
situation…”

“
And?”

“
I think Tristan Lockhart is
in love with you.”

“
What?”

“
Yeah, I mean it’s a
twisted, sick love, but it is love, nonetheless. Didn’t you hear
him on the recording? ‘I’m yours and you’re mine.’ He’s completely
psychotic, of course, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t
love.”

“
You’re psychotic,” she
accused in a tone.

Quinn didn’t take offense. “Well, I’m in the
right place, aren’t I?”

Edie took his hand and held it against her
cheek. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’m just going through a lot.”

Quinn released her hand, then took his and
caressed her cheek, wiping away a tear that’d fallen with his
thumb. “Don’t worry, Edie. We’ll get through this.”

Suddenly, the door that’d
been locked now opened with a loud
bang!
Edie expected to see the shadow
man and braced herself for another assault, but as she focused her
camera, she realized with relief that it was Gunnar, followed by
the others.

When Edie and Quinn stood, the lights
mysteriously came back on, while at the same time, Edie’s camera
died. She lowered it by her side, no longer needing it.

“
Oh, thank goodness,” Jules
said. She rushed over and gave Edie a bear hug.

“
What about me?” Quinn
asked, sounding hurt.

Jules gave him a bear hug too, and then
socked his arm. “Where have you two been?!” she fussed like a
worried mother.

Before he got a chance to answer, Rory
cursed.

“
My camera’s just died,” he
explained his outburst.

“
Mine too,” Edie
said.

Gunnar, Quinn, Bree, and Amee checked over
theirs, and then echoed Edie’s statement.

“
And the electricity’s back
on,” Gunnar said, unnecessarily.

Edie looked up at the lit fluorescent bulbs,
making buzzing noises, as if a hive of bees were causing the
electrical current to stay charged.

“
But who could’ve done it?”
Amee asked. “We’re all here and the breaker box is located in the
central building, all the way on the other side of the
structure.”

Bree gave her sister a knowing look. “We all
know who did it,” she said, then turned toward Edie, and explained,
“He’s killed all our cameras. Ghosts can do that. Mess with
electronics.” Bree didn’t seem mad. She was smiling because a
simultaneous failure of equipment meant that there was a ghost
around.

Edie wasn’t that thrilled and gave hers back
to Gunnar, who stuffed it into the backpack over his shoulder.
“What happened to y’all?” she asked next. “Where’d y’all run off
to?”

Edie knew she sounded accusatory—and southern
as all get out—but they were supposed to be trained ghost hunters.
They shouldn’t have fled!

“
We didn’t run off,” Amee
said, sounding defensive. “One second, that shadow man was rushing
us, and the next second, we were inside Lavinia’s cell, locked
up.”

“
I did feel someone or
something push us inside,” Rory said, recounting the
event.

“
Cold hands,” Gunnar added,
remembering too.

“
We saw you pass by,” Jules
said next, “and we screamed out for you, but you didn’t hear
us.”

“
We didn’t hear you,” Quinn
said, and then gestured at the crematorium. “We somehow ended up
here.”

“
The door was locked,” Edie
added. She waved at the one Jules and the others had magically come
through. “We couldn’t get out.”

“
How’d you get out of
Lavinia’s cell?” Quinn asked Gunnar.

“
We kept banging on it
forever until it just opened,” he replied with a shrug.

“
And how’d you find us?”
Edie asked.

“
Quinn’s cologne,” Jules
replied, and then made a gagging sound. “That stuff’s
toxic.”

Quinn wrapped his arm around Jules’s
shoulders. She shrugged him off. “Yeah, well, that toxic poison led
you to us. Otherwise Edie and I would’ve spent all night down here,
alone.” He thought on that enticing prospect, and then cursed,
“Damn!” because now it wouldn’t happen.

Edie laughed, knowing it’d never happen, and
then tugged on his red shirt. “At least you’re alive,” she said.
“See, you had nothing to worry about.”

Quinn sighed. “Yeah, I guess—”

He was cut off by the sound of something
creaking. Jules and Quinn had heard it before in the so-called
dormitory, where the residents’ cells were. The corridor to the
crematorium was narrow, so they all had to stand practically single
file to witness a vacant wheelchair, slowly moving on its own,
until it stopped with a sudden jerk.

Quinn positioned himself in front of Edie in
a defensive posture. “All right, Tristan, you screwed up sorry
excuse for a ghost! Stop messing with us and leave Edie alone! Go
back wherever the hell you came from, you sick bastard!”

Edie grabbed Quinn’s arm. “What’re you
doing?” she asked, panicking.

“
Provoking the son of a
bitch,” he said, as if it were obvious. “What does he think? Making
a wheelchair move on its own is going to make me crap my
pants?”

“
Oh, I can do so much more,”
a cold, deep voice threatened in Edie’s ear.

She’d been holding onto Quinn, urging him to
relent, but suddenly, he was snatched from her grasp and thrown
right into the wheelchair. He struggled, trying to break free, but
some kind of unseen bindings were holding him stubbornly in place.
Everyone was rushing to free him, but he was jerked back from them
at full speed, as the wheelchair rolled fast, spun around, and then
sped on toward the crematorium.

“
NO!” Edie shouted. She took
off, reaching out as she went, trying to grab hold of the
bars.

Quinn was cursing the entire way down the
makeshift racetrack, but then fell silent, as he busted through the
swinging doors of the crematorium. The wheelchair came to a
screeching halt and threw him out to land on the floor, where his
head collided with the hard surface. He opened his mouth to curse
again, but found that he didn’t have the strength.

Everyone had followed behind Edie, and now
they were attending to Quinn. When Edie secured his head into her
hands, she noticed her palms were stained with his blood. There was
a nasty gash on his forehead.

“
We have to get him to the
hospital,” Edie urged, frantic.

Tristan blew a cold breath in her ear. “He’s
beyond the point of saving. Let’s just put him out of his misery,
shall we? I promise it’ll be quick.”

Suddenly, the crematorium came to life. The
oven doors shot open and the fire inside ignited, beckoning for a
body to be burned. The heat in the room was overwhelming and for
once, Edie wished for the numbing cold of winter.