Dark Season: The Complete Box Set (142 page)

Chapter Eleven

"What's wrong?" Kirsten asks, still smiling. "You look like you've seen a ghost." She pauses. "Come on, Annie. I know you can talk. We've shared so much already. What's the problem here? Why so glum, chum?"

I know I should say something, but my throat is dry and there are no words that can express what I'm thinking. For one thing, I'm not certain whether I could just be imagining the whole thing. For another, I can feel my heart beating faster than usual, and I've got this strong urge to turn and run. But I know I wouldn't get very far. Running just isn't an option in this place. All I can do is stand and stare at her.

"I'm sorry," she says, "did I give you the impression that I was a patient?" She sighs. "Well, I certainly should have been more clear, shouldn't I? Bad, bad Nurse Winter. I'll have to punish myself later." She grins. "I just wanted to get to know you a little, Annie. After all, you're quite the most interesting new patient we've had here for a while. Come on, sit down and let's talk." She stares at me for a moment. "Please?"

She leads me over to her desk and points to a chair.

"Most of our patients are dull specimens," she says as I take a seat. She walks around to the other side of the desk. "People like Mark. Classical psychosis, nothing remarkable or interesting about him at all. To be honest, and I know this will sound heartless, but I'm not entirely sorry he's gone, although I certainly wish the circumstances were better. Poor Dr. Campbell, I did so enjoy butting heads with him."

I still don't know what to say. I thought Kirsten was my friend, someone I could talk to, but instead it turns out that she's actually been Nurse Winter all along.

"But you," she says, walking back over to the window and then turning to face me. "You're interesting. You hear the voice of God, beaming out at you, and he told you to do something really wicked, didn't he? What did he tell you to do again, Annie?" She waits for me to answer, but I don't say a word. "Oh yes, he told you to kill your little brother. I wonder why he did that? Did he tell give you any details, or were you just expected to do the whole thing based on blind trust?"

I turn and look over at the door.

"You want to leave?" she asks, sounding a little hurt.

I look back at her.

"I'm your friend," she says. "I'm still Kirsten. Does it really matter if I also happen to be on the payroll? I thought we got on quite well, Annie. I hope you're not going to disappoint me."

"Everyone's scared of you," I say suddenly, kind of blurting it out.

She pauses. "Yes," she says finally. "They are. I suppose it's because I enforce the rules around here. After all, we can't have this place becoming a holiday camp, can we? Take Mark, for example. He kept spreading all those nasty stories about some kind of burned man. Rubbish, obviously, but people in here can be a rather open to suggestion." She fixes me with a firm stare. "A person in a vulnerable state might easily be persuaded to believe that they, too, saw something nasty. Something evil. Something completely impossible."

I take a deep breath. I know exactly what she's on about. She wants me to say that I didn't see the burned man back in that room. But I did. I know I did. I'm not crazy. Through all of this, I've always tried to remember that I'm not crazy.

"I'm not saying you can't believe these things in your own mind," she continues. "Feel free. We'll get around to fixing that eventually. But we should be careful what we say to others, shouldn't we? Otherwise we might end up with another situation where a patient loses control, and..." She pauses. "Poor Dr. Campbell. His first name was Arthur, did you know that? A valued colleague. I'm a professional, Annie, but at some point I shall have to take a moment to mourn him."

"I want to transfer," I say.

She raises an eyebrow.

"I want to go to a different hospital," I continue. "I don't want to be here."

"Nobody wants to be here," she says. "Well, except maybe me."

"I want to go to a different hospital," I say again.

"Well, it simply can't be done," she replies, smiling. "No, Annie, the fact that you want to leave is precisely the reason why you have to stay, and I have a court order that backs me up. You don't like it here, and the reason is simple. It's because you're being challenged. And that's very necessary. We're going to continue to challenge you, until you change the way you see the world. God -"

"I want to go to a different hospital," I repeat.

"God did not tell you to kill your little brother," she says coldly.

I stare at her, fighting back the tears. "I want to -"

"Shut up," she says. "Don't make me order some special treatment for you, Annie. Think about this from my point of view. You killed your little brother. You shot him in the head, and you insist it was all because God told you to do it? You're dangerous, and you're cruel. I'm trying very hard to like you, but you're making it difficult. Most people in my position would have already given you special treatment, but I'm holding back as much as I can. If you -"

"You can't keep me here," I say, tears rolling down my cheeks. "This isn't a prison."

"You're right," she says, "it's not. Nevertheless, the judge ordered you to be kept here under our supervision until such time as we deem you to be fit to return to society. So really... it's all up to us." She walks over to me and leans down to look me right in the eyes. "Well, it's up to me. As you know, Dr. Campbell is suddenly unavailable. So if you want to get out of here, you have to make me happy."

I stare back at her, determined not to show any more signs of weakness. But as I look into her eyes, I see - just for a moment - something that shouldn't be there. I see a flickering red flame, burning in the black of her pupil.

"Do we understand one another?" she says, turning and walking over to her desk. She rests a finger on the intercom button.

"Satan," I say.

"Excuse me?"

"Satan," I repeat. "I know your name. Don't think that I -"

"Oh dear Lord," she says with a sigh, pressing the button. "I was so hoping we could avoid this, Annie."

"God has sent me here to face you," I say, as I hear the door open and footsteps make their way briskly over toward me. "You're Satan," I say, "and you're -" Suddenly I'm hauled up out of the chair and grasped in the guard's thick arms.

"Special treatment," Kirsten says. "The poor girl's ranting again."

"She's the Devil!" I shout, as the guard drags me out of the room. I kick out, trying to stop him, but it's no use. "I saw it in her eyes!" I scream, as Kirsten watches me being pulled away. "I saw it in her eyes!"

The guard drags me out into the corridor and then along to an elevator. Sliding the door open, he drags me inside and then closes the door before hitting a button. The elevator starts to go down.

"Get off me!" I shout. "She's the Devil! Look into her eyes!"

"Yeah yeah," says the guard. "And God told you to shoot your little brother."

"It's true!" I scream as the elevator comes to a halt. We emerge into what seems to be a small storage area, and the guard drags me through a nearby door and into a treatment room, where he throws me into a chair. Before I can fight back, he straps my arms down.

"Special treatment?" asks a voice nearby. Another man walks into the room. He's young, almost my age, wearing an over-sized white lab coat. He has kind, friendly eyes, and he looks at me with an expression filled with pity. "What's her name?"

"Annie Radford," says the guard, stepping back and looking at me with contempt.

"The one who killed her brother?" the man asks.

The guard nods. "She's nuts."

"Kirsten Winter is the Devil!" I shout at the man. "I saw it in her eyes! Go and look for yourself!"

"Sad," says the man. "I knew she'd end up down here eventually, but I was hoping somehow she might not."

"She's the Devil!" I scream.

"Special treatment coming up," says the man, walking over to a computer on the other side of the room. "Hook her up, Eddie."

The guard comes over and grabs a headset from above, pulling it down until it sits on top of my head like some kind of electric crown.

"What are you going to do to me?" I shout, starting to panic.

"Just some mild shock treatment," says the man. "Studies have shown it can help clear up certain forms of psychosis."

The guard laughs. "Studies," he says, as if it's the funniest word in the world.

"No!" I scream. "You can't do this! I'm telling the truth! She's the Devil!"

The man walks over to a switch on the wall. "You gonna watch, Eddie?" he asks.

Eddie nods. "Fire her up, Jerry."

"You can't do this!" I scream again. "I'm right! She's the Devil! Look in her eyes! She's -"

He flicks the switch. I feel the most enormous jolt of pain strike straight down through my skull and through into my neck. The air is filled with a kind of blue static, and it's as if every inch of my body is tensed. I open my eyes as wide as I can, but everything goes black. The last thing I think is: Dear God, please deliver me from Satan.

The First Shift

(The Night Girl 1.1)

Prologue

"Isn't this where that woman died?" I ask, staring out through the rain-spattered window as my father parks the car. It's late at night, and Crestview Retirement Home looks suitably gloomy in the squall, with just a few lights flickering in the darkness. I've walked past this place so many times and barely even noticed it; now, somehow, it's become my destination, and I
really
don't want to be here.

"That was six months ago," my father says, sounding tired.

"But still," I say, turning to him, "it's not a good thing, is it? I mean, it makes you wonder what's really going on in there if some woman can just die like that. Do they think about the safety of their staff at all?"

He stares at me, clearly not impressed.

"What I mean is, there's obviously a question mark over the security of -"

"Nice try," he says, forcing a smile. "One-off incidents aside, there's nothing wrong with Crestview. Do you think I'd send my only child to work there for the summer if I thought there was any danger of an ax murderer stalking the corridors?"

"It was an ax murderer?" I say, clutching my backpack as I stare wide-eyed at him.

"No!" he replies, leaning over and opening the door next to me, "it was not an ax murderer, as you well know." He sighs as he glances at the dashboard clock; it's 9:51pm, just two minutes before my first shift is due to begin. "Juliet, I really think you should get going. You don't want to be late. You have to set a good first impression, so they can tell you're a reliable person. If they don't like you, they won't want to keep you on."

"I don't want them to keep me on," I say.

"Come on," he replies wearily, "time to get going."

"It's not gonna take me nine minutes to get to the door," I point out.

"Better to be early than late," he says, unbuckling my seat-belt and giving my arm a gentle push. "We've talked about this, Juliet. There's no way I'm going to let you sit around all summer, twiddling your thumbs and spending all your time chatting to people online. That's not how things work in the Collier household, okay? You're an adult now and you're going to work and earn money, and you're going to
save
most of that money for when college starts in a few months. Laziness is not an option."

"I can find another job," I point out, as the clock rolls over to 9:54pm. "One where I don't have to become completely nocturnal."

"I gave you two weeks to find your own job," he replies, "and you got nowhere."

"I got that job at the mall," I remind him.

"And how long did that last?"

I take a deep breath. "Twenty-seven minutes," I say, "but it wasn't my fault. They didn't give me any training, and they -"

"Whatever," my father says, interrupting me. "It's time to do some real work. Trust me, it'll be good for you. Most kids have started working way before their eighteenth birthday. It's my fault for cutting you too much slack. You've got no idea how privileged you've been so far, but a dose of work in the real world is going to set you straight. Now get moving. You don't want to be late on your first day. In the meantime, if you need me, you know where to find me."

"Fine," I say, getting out of the car and slinging my back-pack over my shoulder. With rain pouring all around, I turn back to face him. "Good night," I say sourly. "Sleep well in your big, comfortable bed while your daughter toils away in a retirement home for minimum wage."

"I'll pick you up at 8am," he says, pulling the door shut. I step back and watch as the car pulls away, and then I turn and hurry along the driveway that leads to Crestview's main entrance. I'd never realized how big this place is, but I can see now that there are darkened sections leading off in both directions. Reaching the door, I find that it's locked, so I ring the bell and wait, sheltering under a small awning. Glancing over at a nearby window, I stare at the darkness and suddenly realize there's a person in there, watching me. A shiver runs down my spine, but moments later I hear a key being turned in the lock and I turn to see a middle-aged bald man opening the door.

"Juliet Collier?" he says, not looking particularly enthusiastic as he checks his watch. "Right on time. Come on in."