Eventually Mack retired to his room.
As he lay on the bed, he noticed a dark figure from the corner of his eye. When he turned, the corner stood empty.
“Maybe I am losing it,” he muttered before falling into a fitful sleep.
Mack cupped the stone in his hand, leaning his forehead against the side of his knuckles as if he had a headache — which, miraculously, he didn’t.
Discreetly, he half-opened his hand and peered through the hag stone at the group of doctors gathered in the hallway. He didn’t know what he was looking for.
He had asked Corey for names, descriptions, but the man had shaken his head.
“There are rules in death magic. The stones will be your guides.”
The men looked ordinary, white coats and grim expressions as they took turns looking through the small viewing window into a newly admitted patient’s room.
“Wake up!” a voice shrieked in his ear, and Mack stumbled, almost dropping the stone.
A small, wiry man with a thin black mustache stepped toward him.
“No sleeping in Nam, you stupid shit. You want a bullet in your back?” The man shook his head angrily and stormed past Mack.
Mack gritted his teeth and rested against the wall, stuffing the stone into the pocket of his jeans.
After three days, they’d given him his regular clothes and he’d been surprised how much it elated him to wear his own pants again. Primarily due to his size and the fact that the patient attire clung too tightly to his chest and barely fit over his thighs at all.
Still, most of the shakes had worn off, and the headaches had slowly vanished with the help of the morphine. For the first time in his adult life, Mack was three days sober.
Mack shuffled into Dr. Kaiser’s office and took a seat.
Kaiser glanced up from a form he’d been reading.
“How are you feeling, Mack? Edmund mentioned the night sweats have subsided?”
Mack nodded, touching the stone in his pocket.
“Today’s been better.” Mack held up his hand to show the doctor that the tremble in his fingers had calmed. “The truth is, Dr. Kaiser, physically I feel okay, but mentally,” he tapped his head, “I want a drink like I’ve been trapped in the desert for a month. I think about it constantly. I thought maybe you had a book about head stuff, like how to change your mind.”
Kaiser stood and turned to the bookshelf behind him, nodding.
“I do have some books about changing habits,” Kaiser offered.
As his fingers brushed over the titles, Mack slipped a stone from his pocket and held it to his eye.
A black, swirling mist surrounded the doctor. It seeped out of him and leaked over the walls and floor. The darkness crawled like oozing black vines up the plaster and across the ceiling.
Mack sat frozen, the stone pressed against his eye.
The doctor selected a title and turned abruptly.
Mack jerked his hand from his face, and the stone skittered across the floor.
The doctor seemed not to have noticed.
Mack’s hands shook as he took the book from Dr. Kaiser.
Kaiser held the book, studying Mack for a moment before releasing it.
“Guess that tremble is lingering on a bit,” Kaiser murmured. “Benzodiazepine should do the trick.”
“Sure, doc, whatever you think,” Mack told him, forcing an evenness into his voice.
“The mind is very powerful, Mr. Gallagher. To control it takes continued effort, but most all, a desire to change.”
Not taking his eyes from Mack, Kaiser sat back in his chair.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
Mack glanced at the rug where the stone had landed. He could not retrieve it without alerting Dr. Kaiser to its presence.
“Thanks,” Mack grumbled and stood.
“We have a problem, Mack.” The voice roused him from a deep sleep.
It was Kaiser’s voice, low and accusatory. The doctor had found the stone and understood the implications. Mack was trapped in the asylum. The man could subject him to anything.
Mack sat up and swung his legs off the bed, ready to fight.
The room stood empty save for Rodney, Mack’s roommate, snoring with every exhale.
Mack’s own breath rushed out in a whoosh.
Kaiser was not in the room.
Mack stepped into the canteen and inhaled the rich, spicy smell of chili.
“Chili?” he asked the guy next to him.
“Yep, and they don’t skimp on the garlic either.” The man rubbed his belly and winked at Mack.
Rufus was on another floor at the asylum. He suffered from seizures and a disease that had him falling asleep at inconvenient times. Mack had first met him when the man slumped over while standing in line at the canteen.
“Out like a light,” another patient had told him with a nudge.
On the opposite side of the room, squeezed between two orderlies, stood a small, fine-boned woman with long golden hair and slanted blue eyes. She looked like a grown porcelain doll, and Mack did a double-take when he saw her.
“Who is that?” Mack jostled Rufus, who glanced toward the woman.
“Sophia,” Rufus mumbled from the corner of his mouth. Unlike many of the patients in the asylum, Rufus adhered to the same social expectations of the world beyond the asylum. You could talk about people, but you didn’t make it obvious. “Sophia the Seer.”
Mack looked at her again. The woman watched him. A small frown turned down her pretty mouth, and her forehead was creased with worry. She locked eyes with Mack for an instant and then looked quickly away.
Her expression unsettled him.
Mack got his cup of chili and followed Rufus into the sunny day. They walked back to their building, but Mack turned around again and again, looking for Sophia.
When she stepped from the canteen, the women orderlies stayed close, as if they didn’t dare let her out of their sight.
“What’s with the guard dogs?” Mack asked.
Rufus shrugged.
“Dr. Kaiser claims she’s dangerous. I’ve only seen her at the canteen twice, and she’s been here for years. She’s in the high-risk women’s ward.”
Mack frowned.
“She doesn’t look high risk to me.”
“They never do,” Rufus said matter-of-factly.
“What’s with the name? Sophia the Seer?” Mack asked, watching the women orderlies hurry Sophia back to Building Fifty.
Rufus looked sidelong at Mack.
“People say she speaks with the dead.”
Chapter 29
Mack
A twenty-dollar bribe bought him five minutes with Sophia.
A quickly arranged meeting set up by two orderlies in a seldom used hallway.
“Are you George Corey’s daughter?” Mack asked her.
Sophia stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes looked red and swollen, as if she’d been crying.
“No,” she told him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together and gazed past him.
“What do you want?” She sounded weary, as if she barely had the energy to stand, let alone meet him secretly in a hallway.
“Can you see the… the ghost?”
Sophia’s eyes stayed fixed beyond him, and then she blinked away. She nodded.
“Does he speak? I’m trying to find his daughter,” Mack went on.