Marcie woke up in the deserted wing of the hospital, feeling like a ghost walking delicately through the cold, ice-crystal oncology unit, passing rooms that kept frozen spirits like her. She had given little thought to the fact that walking was something she could no longer do. Overhead lighting, dimmed for the night, darkened the walls and corners until they squeezed the shiny floor into a thin path that ran down to the wall of glass at the end of the hallway.
Around the corner it crept. She sensed it. In the quiet of the nightshift, beneath beeping monitors and whispering ventilators, she heard the rising steps of its shoes. It was way down there for effect. It could have arrived right at her room if it wanted. She thought: Let the Big Bad Thing put on a performance. There’s nothing it’s got that’s going to outdo what I’ve got, she mused. Then it turned the corner and stood at the end of the hall, all shadow but for the shiny tips of its shoes and the flickering of light in its eyes. It couldn’t be seen, but it could be heard breathing. Or was it laughter? The glowing shoes and floating eyes began to move to her, and Marcie considered the dreadful possibility that there were things scarier than terminal cancer. Footsteps and breathy laughter grew louder, but the low lights couldn’t crack the code of shadows; the dark, in fact, followed him like a swarm of black bees. Marcie quickly retraced her steps to her room, seeing no one at the nurse’s station as she went.
Climbing a nest of wires to get into her bed, she drew the blankets over herself. The sheets smelled of her drying sweat. She could hear the shoes: clearer as they reached her room. And the breathing. She peeked out just as it stepped into the doorframe, darkening her room as it canceled light from the hall. She went back under the blankets, trembling. The next time she heard it, it sounded like it was at the edge of her bed.
“Wondrous and Monstrous Ways” appears in the anthology Ghosts, Spirits and Specters, Vol. 2, edited by Xtina Marie and available now from HellBound Books Publishing. Click here to order.
