Making no sound, Gaby slunk away, farther and farther into the woods. God must have been guiding her, because no twigs snapped. No leaves crunched. When she was far enough from Cross that he couldn't hear her, she began running again, as fast and hard as she could push her drained body.
Within minutes, the whole area would be swarming with cops. She didn't intend to be anywhere around when they got there.
As Gaby skulked deeper and deeper into the dank woods, itchy sweat, earthly grit, and the stench of fear coated her skin. She stumbled along until her lungs burned and her thighs felt leaden. She didn't dare stop. Cops could be tenacious, and she knew they'd be looking everywhere for their supposed murderer.
Frustration clouded her eyes, but she'd long ago given up on crying. Anyway, cursing made her feel better than crying did, and she gave in to the urge to voice her discontent.
After several lurid, coarse words, her foot caught on a broken piece of concrete. With a grunt of surprise, she pitched forward and landed on all fours.
A mere inch from her nose, a stone slab crawling with wild ivy and multilegged insects rose up from the earth.
She'd almost cracked her head open.
So close to the unforgiving stone, Gaby couldn't quite read the stamped letters. They blurred into unrecognizable gibberish until she cautiously levered herself away. Dead branches from a thorny bush cut into her palms and knees. A broken twig gouged her upper arm.
She barely noticed.
The marker sat crookedly upright on the weedy ground, an eerie specter of past life. Filled with a deviant trepidation, Gaby stripped away the knotted, entwined vines and read aloud, 'Mulhauser County Isolation Hospital.'
A hospital?
In the middle of the woods?
But a quick look around assured her that the area hadn't always been wooded. The abandoned building was the victim of neglect. 'Erected AD 1850 by the Board of Chosen Freeholders of Mulhauser County.'
Not since Father died had she been anywhere near a hospital. Her heart stuttered in familiar rage.
The cold stone boldly displayed the names of a director, supervisor, medical advisor, architect, and assistant. Eyes narrowed, Gaby whispered aloud, 'Cancer Research Center.'
Sound and sight receded. Seconds stretched into a Ml minute. Memories overtook her mind, playing in rapid, clicking succession with the jarring clarity of a movie reel.
Father Mullond growing ill.
Losing weight.
Losing strength.
Medicines and medical treatment had only robbed him of his dignity and multiplied his suffering. She remembered all the clerics praying to no avail.
She remembered her useless tears, which hadn't changed a thing.
Most of all, she recalled the tragic, yet merciful end that had taken too long to arrive. By the time God claimed him, Father had become a wasted, shriveled being, hollow in body and mind, in no way resembling the powerful man he'd once been.
With a shock, Gaby sucked in a gasping breath and fought off a recurrence of the nausea. She wouldn't think about those awful days, and weeks, and months. She wouldn't think about the year when her world had crashed down around her, when the only friend she'd ever known had been tortured by nature—by the very God she worked so hard to appease.
She wouldn't think about being alone in a life plagued by evil forces that only she could see.
'Screw this.' Using the marker for leverage, Gaby pulled herself to her feet. Bloody fingerprints remained on the stone as she peered around, at last seeing through the woods to the forsaken hospital lurking within.
Staring at the building, she sneered, 'So it looks big and imposing? It's also dead and empty and… nothing at all.'
Covered in abundant plant life, cut off from human traffic, few people would remember this place or even see it. Life would buzz around it, never once making notice of the atrocious structure.
'If things get critical,' Gaby whispered, 'this just might be the perfect place to hide.'
Chapter Four
Curiosity kept Gaby studying the area. Toward the back of the largest building, which she assumed to be the main part of the hospital, smaller buildings sat like forsaken headstones. Picking her way past poison ivy, needle- sharp thorns and hungry insects, Gaby moved to see all the property.
Icy, murky auras shadowed the perimeter of the grounds, moving around her in unsettled displacement, possibly depicting paranormal activity. Unhappy spirits? Vengeful wraiths?
Evil?
Through practice, Gaby had learned to see all the layers of an aura, to disentangle the meanings and nuances. Proper diet, fresh air, exercise, and sunlight strengthened an aura, just as neglect, alcohol, drugs, stress, and lack of rest weakened them.
These auras looked massive, filling the surrounding sky, the very air that fed her lungs. It was as if many small auras had combined into one, because despite the size, they lacked real power or purpose.
Beneath the menace lurked great suffering, crippling pain.
And more.
Contact with others could enable an exchanging of energy, or in some cases, the draining of it. Certain people, places, even memories, could suck the very life out of a being. Whenever Gaby felt herself tiring too quickly, as she did now, she removed herself from the source. But this time, she couldn't.
She edged closer, drawn to a courtyard overlooking the abandoned hospital. The property was so bulky that it even had its own power station.
A mosquito buzzed past Gaby's ear, landed, and bit her neck, drawing a bead of blood. She swatted it away, engrossed at the sight of yet another structure.
Enormous trees and waist-high weeds cloaked a ramshackle house off to the side, perhaps the home of someone who once ran the hospital. Between it and the hospital, a swamp that had once served as a pond festered with mosquitoes and thick moss. A disturbed breeze carried an awful stench off the pond to the air around it.
Wrinkling her nose, Gaby looked back at the house. The roof of the covered porch sank low, threatening to collapse. Paint peeled from every surface. Shingles and shudders had gone missing. Toxic vibes emanated from every unbroken window.
Remnants of a past life, or warning of a current resident? Gaby didn't know. At that moment, she didn't really care.
A deserted playground, hazardous with broken equipment that had once held swings, a jungle gym, a teeter- totter, indicated there had been a children's ward, too. Now only crows flapped around, pecking at crawling insects and cawing to one another in high-pitched screeches that cut the stillness with alarming ferocity.
Gaby started to move closer to the pond, and from nowhere a cold wind went up her spine, making her flesh prickle and the hairs on her nape stand on end. She jerked around, her knife already in her hand as she prepared for battle, ready to face another nightmare.
Only the eerie, soundless lull of the woods greeted her.
Cautious and unconvinced, Gaby turned back to the isolation hospital. Multipaned windows were broken, boarded up, or black with age, cobwebs, and filth. No one looked out at her—at least, no one with eyes that she could see.
And still Gaby had the disquieting sense of being watched, of being mentally dissected. It unnerved her and, knife still drawn, started her on her way in a rush.
