The Passenger

I

drip

Cold, cold walls of old stone. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as my clammy flesh shuddered into goosebumps.

drip

So dark; my flashlight thrust pitiful blinks of yellow light on the walls. So dark, so quiet; the only sound was my own shallow breathing and

drip

the relentless dripping of water, somewhere in the distance, echoing hideously on the stone walls. And my own footsteps, also echoing and fading into the darkness. Breathe, drip, step. My heart pounded in my chest. I moved slowly, so slowly; the floor was littered with the detritus of ages past, when the hollow place had been a psychiatric hospital.

“Nut house,” I whispered and grinned wickedly in the dark. “Loony bin. Funny farm. Coo-coo-cachoo!”

Don’t talk to yourself. You’re wandering through an abandoned, supposedly haunted insane asylum in the middle of the night. You’re already crazy as a spithouse rat; no need to turn up the volume.

Too late for that. I was trespassing on private property, and I’d driven a long way to do so. Here I was in the bowels of southern Missouri, what seemed like a million miles away from my home in Omaha, and why? Because my gut said go. My senses screamed it; I couldn’t ignore the call. Something was here, something that had called to me over all that distance. Maybe I was already crazy.

I edged my way around an ancient wheelchair, tipped over in the middle of the hallway. The wheels shone with cobwebs when my flashlight flickered over it; the metal was red with rust.

drip

I felt the presence again, more strongly this time. It was like a distant scream muffled by thick layers of cotton – but a scream I felt rather than heard. I reached out mentally, trying to touch it. Whatever it was shimmered in my mind, wavering like a heat mirage, then faded. No – receded. To my left.

I turned my flashlight towards the ebbing presence and my light met a huge wooden door, standing slightly ajar. I slipped through the narrow crack and my sweater caught on a nail. I cursed under my breath and then jumped as my own voice hissed back at me, a distorted echo.

Then I heard the voice. A real voice.

“Hello?”

I froze. I flipped off my flashlight and melted against the wall, holding my breath, listening. Footsteps. Human footsteps. Ugh. A cop? Ugh, breaking and entering always made me jumpy. The person was coming toward me; I heard quick, nervous breathing, then another tentative hello. Didn’t sound like a cop; sounded young, maybe a college student, like me.

Sounded terrified.

“Who’s there?” A man’s voice. His fear made him sound younger, but I heard a deep rolling timbre under the fear. And a Southern accent – there came out they-ah.

I stayed silent. I definitely didn’t need to get arrested; I’d come close before and had no desire to experience a night in jail.

“Are you a cop?” he asked, his voice turning accusatory. “Because I’m not trespassing. My grandfather owns this property.”

Holy crap. No freaking way.

I cautiously turned on my flashlight and shone it down the corridor. It landed on a man’s face; he blinked and flinched backward. I noticed he had no light of his own. He was adorable – tall, blonde, tan – not my type, but undeniably adorable. He wore dark clothing, as I did; his garments were scattered with dust and cobwebs.

“Who are you?” I asked brusquely. “Why are you here?”

He frowned and came closer. “I could ask you the same thing. But bein’ a gentleman, I’ll oblige. My name is Vance Prescott Rivers. And yes, that’s Rivers, as in ‘Rivers Mental Institution’. Your turn, ma’am.”

Ma’am. Really? I grinned and closed the gap between us.

“Kara White,” I said. “Psychic investigator. Er … private psychic investigator. I happen to know your grandfather – the old goat has been ignoring my calls for six months. I’ve been requesting to explore and document the psychic phenomena occurring here.”

His eyes widened. “You’re the psychic girl? Well, I’ll be … I’ve been pestering my grandfather to let you in here, but he refused to even give me your number. So … you decided to let yourself in?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Well … it became impossible for me to stay away. You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you why.”

Vance moved slightly closer to me, his eyes searching mine. “You’ve heard them, too?”

“Heard –“ My jaw dropped. “What have you heard?”

“Voices.” He shuddered. “Terrified voices. Tortured. Lost souls, maybe. I don’t know; I’ve never told anyone that I can … hear things. I don’t know much about it; I just know what I hear. And I’ve been hearing these awful voices from deep within the asylum.”

I shook my head in wonder. “You’re a clairaudio.”

“A – come again?”

“A clairaudio. You have psychic hearing, basically. I’ve read about this ability, but I’ve never … it means you can hear things from the past, or from a distance.”

I paused.

“Or from the dead.”

He let out a heavy breath. “Ugh. Pardon my French. I need to sit down … but the circumstances aren’t exactly conducive, are they?”

I looked around at the dirty floor and grimaced. “Not really. Has it happened to you before? The hearing?”

“Yes.” He folded his arms tightly against his chest. “My … my parents died years ago. I was away at boarding school, but I remember waking up in the middle night, hearing their screams. It was a car accident. I heard everything – the crash of the car, the sound of the metal, and … and their screams. I dismissed it as a nightmare, but … I got a call the next day.”

His expression was so forlorn that if I’d known him better, I might have touched him, tried to offer some comfort; but I refrained. Can’t trust strangers, sorry, pal. Although … even as I formed the word stranger in my mind, looking at him, the term felt wrong. He didn’t feel like a stranger. There was something familiar about him, as though I’d known him for years, or known him long ago and forgotten. It was like seeing your soulmate and knowing it instantly; yet different. The emotion flickering across my mind regarding Vance wasn’t romantic, or even sexual, despite his attractiveness. It was some other awareness that I had no words for.

And when he looked back up at me, I could tell he felt it, too.

“So I’m definitely not crazy,” he said.

“No. You’re gifted. I can’t hear the voices you’re talking about, because I’m not a clairaudio.”

He cocked his head, looking like a bewitching sparrow for a moment. “What are you?”

“Precog,” I said. “Precognitive. I get glimpses of the future. Sometimes just a few minutes or seconds, sometimes much longer. I know how my sister is going to die, for example.”

“Holy –!”

“But I don’t know when. It’s not very specific. Like you – you hear these voices, but you don’t know what or who they are, right?”

He nodded.

“So, I see things. Visions, I guess. They used to be really random, but I’ve learned how to focus and see what I want to see. Or need to see.”

“How do you do that?”

I shook my head. “That would take some explaining. It’s a process. You have to learn how to meditate to the point of self-hypnosis. I’m also sensitive, what some call a medium, which means I can also sense spirits or sources of psychic energy, and this cursed mental hospital is off the charts. There’s something here, and it wants to be discovered. It’s like a psychic radio signal, desperately broadcasting to anyone who can pick it up.”

“Like you,” he said. “And me.”

“Right.” I looked past him, down the hallway. “And I felt it – some presence – down that hall. Where you came from.”

“I heard it down there,” he acknowledged. “There’s a tunnel … it’s very dark, and pretty nasty-looking, but I’m sure … then I heard footsteps, came looking for them, and found you.”

I took a deep breath. “Where’s your flashlight?”

“It … burned out.” He frowned. “I was about to go into the tunnel, when all of a sudden blink – out goes the light. Like the wind blowing out a candle.”

“So … something down there wants to be discovered. And something else is trying to prevent it.”

“Let’s hope not.” He paused. “By the way – if you’re a psychic investigator, where’s your equipment? Sound recorder, video, camera, anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Why?”

I peered down the dark hallway and repressed a shudder. “There are plenty of psychics out there – or frauds, more commonly – who try to record psychic telemetry. I’m not one of them. I don’t believe it can be recorded, honestly. My theory is that what we perceive as psychic energy – including ghosts, spirits, whatever – is leaking through from another level. It would be like trying to record a – a broken heart or trying to catch tomorrow on tape. Can’t be done.”

He frowned. “Another level? Level of what?”

I shook my head impatiently. “This isn’t the time to go into it. Suffice it to say, if you see a ghost, it’s not really in this reality; you’re seeing something coming through from another reality. I’ll explain more later; I have a feeling we’re going to get to know each other pretty well.”

“Fine with me,” he grinned.

“Are you ready?” I asked. “I should let you know that this could be dangerous.”

“I have to be ready,” he said.

“Do you trust me?”

He laughed shortly. “All I know about you is that my grandfather doesn’t trust you. And you’re a gorgeous redhead –“

“Covered with cobwebs …”

“Even covered with cobwebs, you’re gorgeous.” He smiled. “So that doesn’t hurt. Besides, these voices – spirits, ghosts, whatever they are – I just don’t want to hear them anymore.”

I started down the hallway, my flashlight going before me. “If you’re a clairaudio, you may always hear voices.”

“Sure. Fine. Just not these voices. They’re driving me crazy.” He flinched. “Maybe that’s a bad term to use. Especially considering the circumstances.”

I laughed, but the sound was high and tight, lacking any real humor. The situation was a bit more serious than I’d anticipated. Some lost soul trapped in the asylum – okay, I could handle that. A malevolent force holding it captive? Maybe a bit beyond my abilities. But feeling flattered by Vance’s compliment, I let my ego get away from me. I can handle it, I thought arrogantly.

How wrong I was. Thank God for Doc.

II

Aside from the thin yellow glow of my flashlight, the darkness was complete. It weighed down on us, wrapped us in its black cobwebby fingers. The asylum was painfully silent; I heard nothing but distant drips and Vance’s shallow breathing. He was more frightened than I was, I realized with a quick shot of amusement. Big tough man.

There was something else, though, and it intensified the further down the hallway we went. A low hum, like a swarm of angry wasps, twitching at the edges of my consciousness. I felt it in my bones; Vance surely heard it, heard something, because his breathing quickened and he drew closer to me.

“I think we’re heading toward some old storage space,” I whispered. “If I remember the blueprints correctly, we should be just below the kitchens.”

“What level are we on?” he murmured back. “I … I got a bit lost, and kind of panicked when my light went out.”

“We’re on the basement level. At the back of the building, I think. Do you hear anything?”

He paused, listening. “Voices. From underneath us.”

“We’re in the basement,” I said again. “There is nothing beneath us.”

“That’s what I hear.”

I stopped and reached out with my senses. I almost could hear something, could definitely sense it; but from which direction, I couldn’t tell. I would have to trust Vance – Vance, who was terrified; Vance, who was clearly inexperienced. Great.

“What do you know about this asylum?” I asked him.

“What – this is no time for a history lesson!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t we going to go find out –“

“I’ve been researching this place for months,” I snapped. “And I couldn’t find one single thing about its history. Don’t you think that’s a little strange? Add that to the fact that there’s crazy psychic energy pouring out of this place. It must have some dark past, something that’s been covered up. You’re a family member. You must know something.”

“Why does it matter?”

“It’s probably the answer to whatever mystery we’re investigating.” I was swiftly losing my patience with Vance. “And maybe there’s a reason why your grandfather refused to let me in here. Tell me what you know, Vance.”

He hesitated. “I … I’m not supposed to talk about … about family stuff.”

He sounded absurdly like a little kid, afraid to get his hand caught in the cookie jar. I turned the flashlight directly on his face; he flinched.

“Do you want to die?” I asked calmly.

“What – no! What do you –“

“Do you want to continue to be haunted by these voices?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you know. It could be the difference between life and death – or success and failure.”

He sighed heavily. “Well … you’re right, the place does have something of a morbid history. There was –“

“Let me guess, a twisted psychotic doctor who performed hideous experiments on the helpless patients.”

“No. The doctors here were good people; so were the nurses. The tragedy here was no horror-movie cliché. It wasn’t a staff member.”

He paused.

“It … it was a patient.”

At that instant the temperature in the corridor dropped – abruptly, chillingly – at least fifteen degrees. I gasped and saw my breath.

“Go on,” I whispered. “What happened?”

“Her name was Amaya Dutton. They shipped her down from someplace up north – Iowa, I think. Her grandparents had died under … unusual circumstances – violent circumstances – and when the cops found their bodies, they also found Amaya. She was eleven, and catatonic. They assumed some crazy person broke in, killed the grandparents, and Amaya watched it all, went into deep shock. This was … oh, back in ’91, I think.

“Then people started dying here, at the asylum. Dying very – er – messily. There were similarities between the deaths here and the deaths of Amaya’s grandparents, so the hospital staff feared that the murderer had followed Amaya from Iowa and was now killing here. My grandfather was the hospital administrator at the time.”

Vance hesitated. His face was closed.

“Then … then she disappeared. And the killing stopped. The hospital was searched from top to bottom, and the surrounding area, the forest, the nearby towns … she was never found. But that was basically the end of Rivers Mental Institution. It struggled along for a few years, but no one had faith in this place anymore. It was … cursed. Or something. And then … bad things happened to the staff members. My father was one of the doctors here, and he and my mom died in that car accident. Another of the doctors was found strangled out in the forest – but no prints on him, no DNA, nothing. A nurse killed herself and wrote –“

He stopped and I punched his shoulder – not lightly, either. “What?”

“She wrote Amaya on the wall of her bedroom. In her own blood. And died there.”

I was silent for a long cold moment. “Sounds like a very dangerous little girl.”

“There were more,” he said. “Lots more. All covered up, thanks to my grandfather. He knows something … but I can’t imagine what. If there was some secret about Amaya, he’s the only one who would know.”

“Maybe not,” I said grimly. “I think we may be about to find out. Is there anything else, Vance?”

“Anything else? Isn’t that enough? What else could it be?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem with being a psychic investigator: you have to go with your gut. Your senses, actually. Mine are telling me that some very nasty things went down in this hospital. Something bad enough to linger. Now, look, Vance – I can’t hear what you’re hearing. I can sense it, but it’s faint. I need you to listen and lead the way.”

He let out a long breath. “As long as you’ll back me up.”

“Whatever we find, I’ll be right there. Ready? Because we are about to get seriously lost in this place, pal. If those voices are coming from underneath us, we’re about to enter a part of the hospital that isn’t on the blueprints.”

“Great.” He sounded less than enthusiastic. “Well, I can hear the voices under us, but I have no idea how to get down there. Where do we even start?”

I thought, feeling helpless. “If you were going to hide an entrance to a secret sub-basement, where would you put it?”

He was silent a long moment, the wheels clearly turning in his head, and I was about ready to punch him again when he spoke.

“Granddad had an office down here. Maybe …” He trailed off, sounding reluctant; he was beginning to put some pieces together: something nasty had indeed happened here, his grandfather knew about it, had covered it up – and had perhaps been a part of it. Vance finally shook his head, and strode purposefully forward. “This way. Follow me.”

Forward we went, but not into the storage area. We turned down another hallway – if possible, darker and filthier than the last. Vance led me through the catacombs of the asylum’s underbelly until I lost track of all the twists and turns we took. I sincerely hoped I could trust Vance – I thought yes, I sensed nothing dark about him – because if he took off, I would have a hard time finding my way out of here. We passed a row of dilapidated cells, each fitted with metal restraints. Vance told me in a hushed voice that this is where the “troublesome inmates” were taken when they were deemed unsafe to be in the general population.

“As far as I know, these hadn’t been used since before my grandfather’s time,” he said, and then again, uncertainly: “As far as I know.”

We turned the corner and came to a slightly more habitable corridor; unlike the others, it was tiled in ancient linoleum instead of having a plain stone floor, and the walls were drywalled, once painted a clean white. Here there were offices, lined up on each side. Vance led me into an office on the end, larger than the others. It was long-empty but still furnished: a big mahogany desk, padded chair, bookshelves lined with books. On the wall was an odd painting, heavily coated with dusty. I picked my way across the debris on the floor to examine the picture more closely.

It was a young girl in a white dress, with her back to the viewer. Long white-blonde hair hung down her back in a perfectly straight line. Her dress fell in neat folds around her ankles. She stood at a fence, looking into a field. That’s where the picture got bizarre; the field was full of tall grass and surrounded by trees, and both grass and trees were clearly beset by a strong wind. Yet the girl seemed untouched by the gale.

“Well, crap,” Vance breathed behind me.

I turned and was shocked to see that all the blood had drained from his face. “What, Vance?”

“That – that picture …”

“What?”

He swallowed forcibly. “Grandfather hung that up the day Amaya arrived. Never told anyone where it came from. It’s her – it’s Amaya. She arrived at the asylum wearing a white dress just like that one, and her hair – it’s her hair. As a kid it always gave me the creeps, and I heard nurses talking about it; how they came in to clean Grandfather’s office at night and if they looked at the painting long enough … she started to turn around.”

I turned back to the painting. Oil on canvas, circa Heaven-knows-when, artist unknown. I reached out to touch it and was rocked backward with a pummeling wave of psychic agony. In my mind I heard a distant thin scream that sounded inhuman.

“What the …” I gasped. My hand tingled painfully where I had almost touched the canvas.

“Get away from it,” said Vance sharply.

I was glad to obey.

“When the asylum closed, I came here by myself,” he said in a low voice. “I had been having terrible dreams about – about her. And about this painting. I decided to burn it. The first time I tried to touch it, I felt – well, probably what you just felt. Attacked. But I was determined … or stupid. I ripped it off the wall and put it in a fireplace upstairs. It … it wouldn’t burn. I soaked it in oil. It … it still wouldn’t burn.”

I stared at him.

“I brought it back down here and hung it back up,” he continued. “I didn’t know what else to do. I doubt anyone has touched it or looked at it since.”

“Why am I getting a worse and worse feeling about this little girl?”

“You aren’t alone.” He moved to the desk and began rummaging through papers. “I’m ready for this bull to be over – pardon my language. If there’s a subbasement, Grandfather would have known about it; he knew everything about the asylum.”

“What’s that door?” I asked, pointing to the back of the room.

“Grandfather’s personal W.C.,” he replied with a grin.

“W.C.?”

“Water closet.”

“Oh, good Lord.” I made my way back to the door and tried the handle. Locked. Big surprise. “Vance, can you break this open?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you have to powder your nose?”

“Don’t be silly. I want to see if this is really a so-called water closet.”

He joined me at the back of the room and tested the door handle. Typical male move, but I squashed my irritation.

“Stand back,” he said.

Fuming silently about male machoism, I obeyed. He lunged at the door, shoulder-first, and nearly fell over when the old, damp wood of the door easily gave beneath his weight. With a quick, sheepish glance at me, he pulled open what remained of the door and peeked inside the W.C.

“Kara, you’d better look at this.”

I looked.

It was no water closet. Behind the door was a small stone room, cold and pitch-black until our flashlights pierced the darkness. The room was littered with candles and against the far wall was what looked like a pagan altar.

“Do you have any matches?” I whispered.

“I have a lighter.”

“Light some of those candles.”

“Why are we whispering?”

I blinked. “Don’t know. Come on, Vance, light things up. Let’s take a closer look.”

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a Bic lighter. I set up the candles – most had fallen on the floor – and he lit them until the small room was bright with candlelight and the altar was fully illuminated.

And altar it was, beyond a doubt. An altar to Amaya. There was a picture of her, a black-and-white snapshot yellowed with age, and around it, layers of ancient dead flowers. The candles were concentrated around the altar area, and in the middle of it all lay a leather-bound book.

I reached for it.

“I don’t even want to know,” groaned Vance.

“What, that your grandpappy had an unhealthy fascination with a girl who almost certainly had powerful negative psychic powers?”

“Yeah, that.”

I opened the book.

She leads me, she walks beside me, she leads me. She opens my mind. She opens my eyes and my eye and my – all of my eyes.

She shows me she shows me. This wall breaks and that one opens and they’re all here and none of them are here. She is the truth, she is the way, she leads me she shows me. She opens her flesh. She opens my eyes unto her flesh. She opens the walls. The walls open. The barriers crack. The walls are gone.

This place is thin. Things come through. She opens the door.

I read the passage to Vance. “It goes on and on like this, gabbling nonsense. Any of this sound familiar? Doors, openings?”

“No clue.” He took the book and skimmed through it. “He was completely obsessed with her, Kara. This is a shrine. I had no idea …”

I could sense his worst fear: had his grandfather sexually abused the troubled girl? I didn’t want to think about it, either.

“I have a feeling that this room leads to the sub-basement,” I said. “Put that psycho book down and let’s check around.”

He dropped the book as though it were poisonous and started feeling the walls, looking for a loose stone, a hollow place, anything. I noticed he shied away from the altar; I couldn’t blame him, but everything had to be checked. I hesitated, then shoved aside everything – the photo, the dead flowers, the book, other trinkets and mementos – a gold locket, a scrap of white lace (from her dress?), blue ribbons … a lock of blonde hair.

The stones in the wall behind the altar looked different. I felt around and pushed; something gave, but just a smidge.

“Here, Vance. Give me that strong shoulder again.”

His chest swelled a bit and he complied. This door – for door it was – didn’t give as easily; he thrust his weight against the wall several times before a crack finally opened. I helped him shove until the crack widened enough for us to slip through. The pale glow of the candles barely reached into the darkness behind the stone wall. The air was thick and wet and smelled strongly of decay. We moved hesitantly, reluctantly, into the black and stink of the world underneath the asylum.

There were no steps descending into the earth; instead, we felt our way along a winding corridor that gradually sloped downward. The walls and floor were slick with ancient slime, and the farther we went, the colder the air became.

“The voices are getting louder,” Vance whispered. His face was sheet-pale and looked pained.

He didn’t have to tell me; I could hear them myself at this point. Something reached out and clawed at us in the darkness, a feeling of intense cold and terror, a feeling of endless dark and iron chains. I had felt that same feeling only once before, and knew it.

The dead.

III

She trembled in the dark, at this moment only Amaya and nothing else. The dark Other was sleeping, for which she was grateful. She hated the feeling of It, Its darkness in her body, Its hideous thoughts polluting her young mind. When It took over, Amaya could only cringe in the corner of her own mind … and watch.

The things It did had gnawed at her sanity and nearly shattered her mind. She couldn’t remember where she came from, her birthday, even how old she was. She knew she was Amaya, but had no memory of a surname or parents. She did remember the Duttons. Kind people, like grandparents to her, who had taken her in.

And she remembered coming out of that dark daze with the Duttons’ fresh warm blood on her face and in her mouth. She remembered screaming until her throat bled.

Amaya had a feeling that all those she had loved in her short life had been destroyed by the Other. Perhaps it was a mercy she could not remember her parents, or miss them. Or know what had happened to them.

She wept, alone in the dark with these thoughts. But being alone was better than –

Ah, there it was. The key scraping in the lock. The low creak of the door swinging open. And his footsteps.

“Did you hear that?” Vance hissed as we made our way hesitantly deeper into the asylum.

“The crying?”

“Yes. I know that cry. I’ve heard it in my dreams since I was a little boy.” He shook his head violently. “It’s – it’s hideous. It wants to sound human, but there’s something underneath … like a little girl –“

“Amaya.”

“Maybe. Like Amaya, but something huge and hideous underneath.”

I shivered as the temperature dipped yet again. “So she was possessed by a demon or something? I can’t believe a little girl could honestly be evil on her own.”

“Me neither. Do you –“

A sudden scream – horribly close – interrupted him. The black corridor was illuminated by something just around the corner, something that was shrieking with an inhuman voice. I grabbed Vance’s arm as the ghostly glow came closer.

“What is it?” he hissed.

“Shhh!”

It floated into view, a displaced spirit, though unlike anything I’d ever seen before – and yes, I had seen ghosts, more than I liked. Most spirits still looked human, but this thing – raw bone shone through its torn flesh; its mouth gaped as though its jaw were broken; its eyes had fallen or been ripped from their sockets. It was naked and sexless, the body emaciated beyond sexual distinction. Vance and I stood frozen, staring at the thing in horror. Still, as awful as it was to look at, I knew ghosts could not harm the living.

Thought I knew.

Vance reached out toward the tortured thing. “Spirit, we mean no harm. If you are trapped here, we want to set you free. Can you communicate with us?”

It reached back; for one fragile moment I thought we had a chance; and then it wrapped its withered hands around Vance’s throat. He gasped for breath, unable even to scream. I saw a white light being sucked from his body by the vengeful spirit. I grabbed Vance, jerked him backward, but could not break the thing’s grasp.

“Stop!” I cried. “We aren’t here to hurt you! Stop, you’re killing him!”

“It can’t understand you,” said a voice behind me.

I screamed and whirled around. Another figure had materialized from the darkness – but this one was distinctly human, a young man about my age with curly brown hair and thick glasses, wielding his flashlight like a saber.

The instant I saw him, something clicked into place. He belonged with us.

“It’s all right,” he said, his voice crisply British. “I can talk to it.”

He moved toward the specter and thrust his hands into the thing’s ectoplasmic chest. The creature instantly let go of Vance, who tumbled to the ground, semi-conscious. I caught him before his head could strike the ground.

The stranger was making direct eye contact – so to speak – with the dead thing. If he spoke, it was purely mental; the hall was eerily silent. Finally the spirit’s intense glow softened and it floated back down the corridor, out of sight.

“Who – who are you?” I gasped.

He took off his glasses and polished them fussily on his wool scarf. His hands were slim and white, girl’s hands. “Maddox Addison William Perry. Call me Doc. And you are?”

I gathered my composure as best I could. “Kara – Kara White. This is Vance Rivers. We – we were trying to investigate –“

“I know. I’ve been following you. I wasn’t sure of your intentions, so I stayed back.”

Vance moaned, coming back to full consciousness. “What the – what happened …?”

“This is Doc. He saved your ass.” I turned my attention back to Doc. “Our intentions – what do you mean? And what are you, a medium?”

“Correct. As for your intentions – well, I have been studying Amaya Dutton, and her powers have been used for evil before. I didn’t know – still don’t know – why you are here.”

I stared at him. “Studying …?”

He squatted down to get on eye-level with Vance and me. “This is not the best time for explanations, Miss White, so I will make it brief. Suffice it to say that I am a student of the paranormal. Miss Dutton’s case was so fascinating that it brought me here from England. I have studied the farmhouse where her grandparents were slaughtered, and my research has brought me here.”

“Us too,” I said quickly. “We’re not interested in using whatever power she might have had. I am – well, I guess I’m also a student of the paranormal, as you say. I felt a strong psychic vibe from this place and came to investigate. Vance here – his grandfather owns the place, by the way – is a clairaudio; he’s been hearing disturbed voices from the asylum.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Doc. He stood, offered me a hand; I got to my feet, pulling Vance with me. “There’s a lot you probably don’t know about Amaya.”

“We think she was possessed,” said Vance.

Doc laughed shortly. “Oh, yes – that goes without saying – but it was no mere demonic possession. She came into contact with a doorway. She fell into one of the places between, and came out with a passenger.”

I blinked. “Sorry, what?”

“No time. We have to get out of here. I didn’t know if it were still here, but obviously it is, and it’s been collecting souls. Unless you want to be next, I suggest we quit the asylum at once.”

“It?” asked Vance. “It what? Collecting souls?”

“We want to stop whatever is happening here,” I said firmly. “We aren’t leaving until we help the souls trapped here. What is this thing that’s been collecting them? Is it Amaya?”

“No, it’s her passenger,” Doc said impatiently. “Look, we aren’t enough to face this thing, trust me. If you couldn’t handle just one spirit, you obviously haven’t had much training in your psychic abilities. We need to leave now.”

“Why?” I demanded. “You dispatched that ghost with no problem. Surely you can do it again.”

“That was just a spirit,” Doc snapped. “The passenger is –“

Abruptly the walls began to shake; I grabbed Vance to avoid falling over.

“Too late. It knows we’re here.” Doc turned to the darkness of the corridor before us. He clenched and unclenched his fists. “Look, if we work together, there’s a slight chance we might make it out of here alive.”

He strode purposefully into the black, and Vance and I hurried after him, not knowing what else to do. The corridor continued the snake downward, curving around; within a few minutes the darkness began to fade into a dull grey light. I noticed that Doc’s hands shook as he walked. He knew more than he had let on, but something told me I really didn’t want to know.

The hall opened up so suddenly that I gasped – at the end of the corridor was a cavern the size of a football stadium. It was lit from the center, where a pillar of grey light rose to the vast ceiling. Floating around the column of light, moaning and whispering, were more disfigured spirits like the one we had encountered in the hall. They were not only trapped; they were tortured. No matter how afraid Doc was of this passenger thing, we couldn’t let these poor spirits remain in this hellscape.

Then a sound echoed through the cavern, the last sound I expected, and more eerie and ugly than I could have imagined.

A little girl singing – Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are …

The air before us shimmered and a figure materialized. It was Amaya: blonde and pretty, in a long white dress. But her eyes were black holes, and something inhuman looked out at us. Then it spoke, its lips unmoving but its voice filling the cave.

Usually I am forced to hunt for souls. Now you have come to me. How convenient.

“I know what you are,” said Doc in a low voice. “We are not ordinary humans. We have powers beyond what you know. You cannot take our souls.”

It laughed, and the sound elicited goosebumps all over my body.

A Dead Speaker, a Future Seer, and a Spirit Hearer. Your tiny gifts are nothing. You think you know me? None of your kind can know me or conceive of my power. I come from one of the places between, and all things are known to me.

“Not all things,” said Doc. “But you’re wrong, I know a lot about you and your kind. And I know that you cannot resist a game of chance.”

It hesitated. What kind of game?

Doc smiled grimly. “A special task. My friends and I are so powerful that we have created an impossible task, something even you cannot perform.”

You lie! I am a Passenger of Between, and all things are known to me!

“Not all things. If you can perform this task, we will give you our souls.”

“Doc!” I gasped.

“But if you cannot,” he continued, ignoring me, “you must leave this place, and release all the souls you have stolen.”

The thing paused in thought. I saw that Doc’s hands were still shaking, but his posture was confident.

Very well. What is this task?

Doc reached up and plucked a single curly hair from his head. “Straighten this.”

The thing recoiled and its mouth split its face open, revealing nothing but blackness behind it. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Oh, yes,” said Doc. “I know you, Brahmarâkshas. You couldn’t do it in India, and you can’t do it here. You lose.”

The thing swelled, contorting the image of Amaya’s body grotesquely. It radiated malevolence, and something else: helplessness. Somehow, miraculously, Doc had tricked the thing. It exploded in a flash of blackness, and the silvery column of light in the middle of the room began to fade. The tormented spirits floated up to the ceiling and vanished, one by one. Within moments, the cavern was dark … and completely devoid of any psychic energy. It was like music being blasted in your ears, and having someone abruptly switch it off.

We would learn later that at that very moment, the brain tumor that had been growing in old Mr. Rivers’ brain for years suddenly and impossibly burst, killing him instantly. A tumor very likely planted by Amaya’s passenger.

We stood silently, grasping for cogent thought, the only light a dim golden glow from Doc’s and my flashlights.

“Doc,” I said at last, “seriously, what was that?”

He let out a pent-up breath. “I … I can’t believe that worked.”

“What worked?!”

He grinned. “Apparently you are unfamiliar with Indian fairy tales, or you would have recognized the story of ‘The Brahmarâkshas and the Hair’. Quick version: a landlord having problems with his tenants petitioned a holy man for help. The holy man taught him an incantation to summon a demonic creature called the Brahmarâkshas. If the landlord repeated the incantation for three months, the thing would appear and become his slave. Well, he did, and it showed up, and delivered the punch line: keep me busy or I kill you. Well, eventually the landlord ran out of tasks for the thing to perform, so his wife gave it a curly hair to straighten. It couldn’t, and had to flee. The landlord was free from his deadly servant.”

Vance shook his head in amazement. “And you knew this thing was a Brahmakawhozit how exactly?”

“Because her father summoned it,” Doc said. “I told you, I’ve been researching Amaya for quite some time. Unfortunately for him, Edward Dutton didn’t say the incantation correctly, and he didn’t fully understand what he was summoning. He was a low wizard; he thought he was just calling up an imp to do some dirty work for him. He didn’t know how to contend with a Brahmarâkshas. He created a doorway and was pulled into it and destroyed. His wife tried to follow, and I can only assume she was killed, too. Then it pulled Amaya through, and chose to possess her … and come into our world to play.”

“The passenger,” I said.

“Yes. That’s one of the safer words used to describe this creature.”

“And these … these places between?” Vance asked.

Doc looked at him, his face blank. “I don’t know yet. I kind of hope I never do.”

I turned away. “So there’s only one thing left to do.”

“What?” Doc asked.

“Amaya. She’s here. I think we should … find her.”

“This could destroy my family,” Vance said with a sigh. “But I don’t know what else to do. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. This will destroy Gramps, but … I mean …”

I gave him a quick hug. He was doing the right thing. Of course, the old man was already dead - but we didn’t know that then. And that’s a whole different story …

I shone the flashlight around, but it hardly shed any light on the immense cave. I moved forward carefully, aiming the flashlight directly before me so I didn’t trip over any rocks. I made my way into the cavern; behind me I heard Vance and Doc speaking; probably Doc was filling Vance in on everything he had learned about Amaya. I would catch up later. Right now, I was only interested in one thing.

And I found her, in the farthest corner of the cave.

I knelt beside the little skeleton. There was an iron manacle around one ankle; she was chained to the wall. Had Vance’s grandfather gotten spooked by the passenger within her, and left her down here to die? If he had thought her death would end the curse, he was very wrong. I opened my mouth to call Doc and Vance over, but saw something that froze the words in my throat.

On the wall by the corpse, a sentence was scratched into the stone, over and over again.

It always comes back.