Ghost: Books of the Dead - Fantasy Best Seller and Supernatural Teen Book: (Ghost, Occult, Supernatural, Occult and Supernatural) (26 page)

“I asked you something, Nurse Sonnen. Please answer me that,” Emily pleaded for the second time. She wanted to be sure that what she saw was real and not just an illusion.

“I will tell you, but first you need to completely relax. Can you do that,” Nurse Sonnen asked firmly.

“I can do that,” Emily promised, but a little tear escaped her eyes.

It didn’t go unnoticed by Nurse Sonnen. Therefore, she didn’t delay in telling Emily what actually happened. “Mr. Mitchell gave me a call, and there were two first-year students who got you here,” Nurse Sonnen stated.

“What did they say,” Emily persisted, wanting to know more?

“Mr. Mitchell called me and said that they heard a loud shriek, more like someone was afraid, and they went over to inspect what had happened. You were lying there unconscious, but there was no one there with you. They looked around, but you were alone. There were very few students in the library at that time, and all were sitting at other ends of the room. They didn’t see anyone approaching or leaving. So, it was assumed that you passed out due to stress. Someone did question why you shrieked so loudly. Nothing was determined, so everyone is waiting and eager to know what actually happened. You were unconscious for about twenty minutes and your heart beat was rapid, but other than that, you are fine. There is nothing serious to worry about,” Nurse Sonnen stated. She told Emily each fact very carefully, so as not to make her overly anxious.

“Are they waiting to know what happened,” Emily softly asked. “But what do I say?” The incident wasn’t pleasant for Emily. She was at a loss of knowing the appropriate explanation she should provide.

Nurse Sonnen seemed to have comprehended that something was not right about the situation. “You don’t have to say anything that you don’t want, but I hope that it is nothing serious. You can tell me if you want.”

Emily wanted to tell someone what had happened. The incident was too much for her to keep to herself, but she wasn’t sure if she could trust Nurse Sonnen with the truth. It was still unreal to imagine it herself.

“You don’t have to,” the nurse assured her. “Just rest for a while and call me if you need me. I will be just outside the door.” Nurse Sonnen stroked her hair gently, and then tucked her in with the cover. After that, she moved towards the door to exit the room.

“Nurse Sonnen, please wait. Don’t go.” Emily stopped her.

“What is it?”

“Don’t tell anyone anything, please!” Emily pleaded in a grieving tone.

“But you didn’t tell me anything, Emily.”

“Just tell them, it was fatigue and I lost consciousness due to that. I don't want to say anything.”

“But eventually they will want to know and you will have to offer an explanation. For now, I will say what you want.” Nurse Sonnen left the room without saying anything more.

Emily turned to her side and sobbed. She hated to be pitied but she pitied herself for being so weak. She was embarrassed and that made her hate herself even more. Nurse Sonnen’s last words echoed in her mind.

Eventually they will want to know…

For the first time in her life, she wanted to run away. For a fleeting second, she had the urge to leave this place and head for the comforts of her home, where she would be looked after and cared for. It's where she would be safe and have nothing to worry about. That thought made her well up and she cried even harder.

Emily didn’t remember how long she cried, but she must have drifted off to sleep. She opened her eyes and batted her eyelids as the light in the room was too bright. Emily took some time to adjust to it. When she woke up, it was past 6:00 p.m. and Emily felt hungry.

“Nurse Sonnen! Nurse Sonnen!” Emily called, but no one came in.

So she pressed the switch beside her bed, which alerted the nurse outside. Nurse Sonnen came in a hurry, obviously thinking there might be an emergency, but seemed relieved to see that everything looked normal. Emily said she called her to inform her that she was feeling a lot better.

“You were sleeping like a baby, so I didn’t wake you up. If you want, we can let you go. Dr. Cline can check you one last time and you will be good to go,” Nurse Sonnen informed her.

While removing the covers and cleaning Emily up, the nurse wanted to know if she slept well. Emily replied that she felt much better.

“Just wait here,” the nurse said, “and I will call Dr. Cline for you.”

Doctor Cline was the college doctor and resided on the campus. He was kind and friendly and knew most of the students who visited him. Emily was already up and ready to go, preparing for Dr. Cline to walk through the door. She tried to act normal, so that the doctor would let her go with a minimal checkup and not probe too much into it. However, Nurse Sonnen came back with a different doctor.

“Emily, this is Dr. Cameron. She is new here and she will be checking on you. So, lie down please,” she ordered.

Emily didn’t move, because she was expecting Dr. Cline. She wanted to get through the process quickly but this was a complication she wasn’t expecting.

“What happened to Dr. Cline? I thought he was here when I first came in.” Emily wanted to know so badly that she forgot to greet the new Doctor.

Nurse Sonnen looked as if she wasn’t prepared to answer the question. She briefly mentioned, “Dr. Cline said that he had to leave, so Dr. Cameron took over. She will be checking on you.”

Emily looked at her intently and finally greeted the new doctor, “Hello, Dr. Cameron. It’s nice to meet you, but I haven’t seen you around. Are you new?”

“Hello Emily, I heard you were unconscious. Are you feeling better now?”

Dr. Cameron was warm and her words were comforting, but they didn’t soothe Emily's discomfort. Dr. Cameron seemed to overlook Emily’s questions and went on checking her. First, she checked her pulse rate, and then her eyes. Emily shifted a little, showing her impatience, but the doctor was unfazed. Emily wondered if it was on purpose.

“How long will this take?” Emily wanted to know.

Nurse Sonnen answered instead of the doctor. “You seem to be in a hurry,” the nurse observed. “Be patient. This will take a little time. We don’t want you falling sick again. We’re ultimately responsible for your overall health and well-being, you know.”

Emily thought that Nurse Sonnen’s behavior was cold and stiff, but as she was in a hurry to get out, Emily decided it was best for her to keep quiet.

“Now, you are fine, and you can leave.” Dr. Cameron gave Emily a clean bill of health. Then, she wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Here, take this. I have prescribed a vitamin for you along with a nerve soother. Take them before you sleep, and tomorrow you will be ready to go.”

Emily meekly thanked both Nurse Sonnen and the new doctor and left the room. She wanted to make sure that Nurse Sonnen hadn’t told anybody about the incident, but she was already gone. So Emily continued on her way to get the medicines before going back to her dorm room. At the pharmacy counter, Emily handed the pharmacist her prescription and he started looking for them from a nearby shelf. While going through the bottles of different colors, he asked indifferently, “You fainted today?”

Emily stared at him without taking the medicines from his hand. Then, she asked him, “How did you know? Who told you about this?”

“I don’t remember who told me,” the pharmacist said, “because many people were discussing it. I must have overheard it. I don’t think anyone told me actually,” he said, but Emily was unsure.

“What were they talking about? Did you hear my name?”

“You know how people talk,” he said, leaning closer to Emily. “Some of the students saw you in the library talking to yourself and then they heard you scream and faint. So you were moved to see the doctor.” He quickly remembered to remain professional and changed the subject. “These medicines are nerve soothers, but you need to relax first.”

Emily heard the same advice countless times that day, but how could she relax until she sorted out the recent occurrences in her life.

“They heard me speaking to myself, but that’s not possible,” Emily told the pharmacist. “My friend, Scott, was there. Then I was speaking to this girl with green eyes and…” Emily stopped all of a sudden. She began to put the pieces of the puzzle together herself.

At first, there was no reaction from the pharmacist, but then he assured her saying, “We all talk to ourselves at times. There is no need to be ashamed about that.” He arranged the medicine strip for her, and noted down the dose before handing it to her. “Take them as instructed and everything will be fine.”

“But I didn’t…” Emily tried to offer an explanation one more time, but the pharmacist was persistent. He urged her to go back to her dorm and rest. “Did you believe what they said?” Emily wanted to know.

“You are stressed out and it can happen,” he said in a soothing, almost effeminate voice. “Now don’t think about it too much. All you need is a good night's sleep.” He gave Emily an assuring smile, and she didn’t dispute him. His words conveyed that he believed what he heard, and she couldn’t do a thing about it.

“I’ll go then, thank you for the advice,” she said, still feeling uneasy, scared and rattled.

She was sure that there was indeed a woman she was talking to in the library.
It was not stress or anxiety
, she told herself. 
My brain was working fine when I spoke to the green-eyed woman
,
so why am I being told otherwise
?
It could only mean one thing; there were actually two supernatural beings that I encountered.

Emily froze at the thought, and she shuddered even more when a cold wind touched her bare face. She ran as fast as her legs could take her, back to the safety of her dorm room. On her way to the dorm, Emily decided to stop by Jamie’s room. So she skipped her room and knocked on Jamie’s door instead. Emily was not expecting Jamie to open the door; she expected it to be her roommate, Fiona. The door swung open and Natalie stood there looking at Emily with a blank, wordless stare.

“Jamie, are you up,” Emily asked while standing in the doorway?

Jamie showed no interest. “I’m fine. Do you need something,” she asked back?

“I just dropped by to check if you were doing all right, and I guess you are.” Emily was hoping that Jamie would ask her in, so she lingered at the doorway. She wasn’t asked inside so Emily said, “I will go then.”

Emily started to leave, but Jamie stopped her at the last minute. “Is that all you wanted to say and nothing else?” She waited for her to give an answer.

Emily looked back with sad eyes because she had to explain her situation again. In doing so, she would have to relive the horrid memories which she wanted to forget and bury in her subconscious. “I do, I came here to apologize for being so rude last night, and I hope we can go back to being friends.”

“Are you always like this,” Jamie asked? There was a faint smile in her lips, and before Emily answered anything else, Jamie invited her in. “Come on in. Fiona is meeting her friends and they’ll be doing group study tonight. There’s no one here so you can tell me what happened.”

“Didn’t you hear anything? I thought everyone knew by now. Even the pharmacist knows,” Emily said casually.

“I heard that you fainted in the library and they heard you shriek loudly. Fiona told me, but I want to know what happened directly from the horse's mouth. Only if you’re fine with it,” Natalie said. Her voice was calm and soothing, and it assured Emily that she was in no hurry.

“This is so out of character for you,” Emily said. “What made you change?”

 “What do you mean,” Jamie questioned jokingly?

Emily relaxed herself down on the couch, and said, “Only a few days ago, you were scrambling through any information that you could lay your hands on. You even wanted to track Grace to Elmhurst, and now you are asking me to relax. Come on, I shrieked and fainted in the library. Some people even said that they saw me talking to myself, that there was no one present when the incident happened and you’re so subdued? It is so unlike you, that is all. Where is your curious little self hiding, Jamie, or is there something else in your mind that you’re not telling me?”

“You are very suspicious, aren’t you? Yes, I heard everything, but I know when to pick up things and when to let them go. I’m here to listen to whatever you have to say, so go ahead if you want to,” Jamie announced.

“I was looking for you all day,” Emily began, “but I couldn’t get hold of you. I even went to look for you in your class. I tried calling you before that, but you didn’t answer. Your classmates showered me with questions, pestering me about what we were up to, so I ran away from there.” She giggled a bit and relaxed even more. “I only stopped when Scott asked me to. He said he wanted to inform me of something about Grace,” Emily said.

“You were looking for me at class? Why? You could have just come here instead,” Jamie told her.

“Well, someone overheard our conversation while we were talking on the phone and I thought that you…” Emily paused and rephrased her question, “…and I thought you might know who it was, or if you had seen anyone. No sooner did I enter my own class, my friends and classmates wanted to know about the conversation I had with Mrs. Aldman. You were the only one there and I wanted to know if you saw anyone lurking around or someone who could have overheard our conversation.”

“Emily, let’s be fair, you wanted to know if I was the one who spilled the beans. There is no point denying it, and I don’t blame you, but it wasn’t me. I was locked up the entire day in my room. I didn’t speak with Fiona yesterday night and I was upset over what happened, so I went straight to bed. By the time I woke up, she was gone and I didn’t feel very well, so I decided to take a break. So if you are looking for someone who told about your conversation with Mrs. Aldman, then it wasn’t me,” Jamie said in one breath. “But what about Denise or Keisha, did they ask you, too,” Jamie added?

“I … I didn’t see them in class today, neither did I hear anything from them for the past few days. It is a little surprising to me, as well. But what could have possibly gotten into them to behave in such a manner,” Emily asked, clearly expressing her doubts.