Doomsday

3. Life at Sunnyside-1

SCARKK

Scarkk laughed out loud. And why not? Nobody would hear him tucked deep inside the mind of an unaware human. He was happier than he’d been since the Dark Ages, when the happiness of evil spirits was well known in the demon world. The only thing that gave an evil spirit true happiness was when it caused intense grief, torment, and terror within a human being. Humans were an evil spirit’s natural prey. Only a handful of people could detect spirits that were inside their own bodies, let alone the bodies of others. Sure, a few rare people could see evil spirits, and several others actually understood how to fight them, but overall humans were still easy prey.

howScarkk had taken on an important assignment that the most powerful of all evil spirits had told him would help win the great war to come. Scarkk, himself, was second in strength only to Rebek. He had long been recognized in the demon world as the least detectable of all spirits while possessing a host. Scarkk’s skill at building mazes within mazes where he could hide from a host’s mind-sight was legendary. Now he inhabited the body of the Hated One’s sister, and he loved it. Her body grew weaker every day as pure exhaustion set in from lack of sleep. She was afraid to even close her eyes. Soon, he would crush her mind into tiny pieces and drain her of everything that made her human. If she survived at all, she’d be nothing more than a vegetable.

Things were going especially well now that his host lived inside a mental institution and didn’t know what really caused her problems. Not only that, the Hated One could only visit her once a month. Scarkk suspected the young man could see evil spirits, or at least detect them, but if he could, it didn’t matter if he wasn’t here.

Like all demons, Scarkk despised the Hated One with all his being. The night he had first inhabited the girl had been too close for comfort. The Hated One had entered her room and thrown the Doomsday Shroud over her. Scarkk hadn’t known the Hated One had gotten the Shroud, but the clever spirit had been lucky enough to escape from her body an instant before the Shroud covered her. He had hidden in a heating duct until the Shroud and her brother were gone. When Kelly Bishop had fallen asleep, he’d re-entered her body and found a very cozy place deep within her brain.

He toured through her mind, seeking her fears to work his best psychological t*****e with impunity. All evil spirits had insatiable appetites, and fear was their meal of choice. Scarkk had eaten so much fear from this girl that he worried he might have gained weight. He imagined himself a chubby evil spirit rolling around inside some hapless human, and it made him laugh uncontrollably.

KELLY

Kelly lay in her padded room at Sunnyside, pretending to be asleep. She heard Dr. Arndt’s thoughts outside the door and knew the woman was watching her on the video monitor. She wanted to shout inside Arndt’s head to just come on in. Why did she stand out there for so long, anyway? When Kelly considered it, the reason was obvious. The good doctor wanted to see if her patient would start hovering again.

Kelly wanted to see it, too, if she could, through Dr. Arndt’s eyes. Nothing was happening now, but lately she never knew when to expect another “episode,” as the psychiatrist preferred to call those floating moments.

Kelly had been at Sunnyside for over six months, and her condition continued to deteriorate. The nightmares, worse than ever, now seemed to have fixated on the terrible mansion with the many rooms and their closed doors. She had only opened a few of the doors, so far, because whenever she did, someone she cared about was in the room with something terrible happening to them. Kelly wanted to stay away from the mansion, but she had no control over her dreams.

While at Sunnyside, she had met some of the other patients during the few times they had allowed her to be in the activity room. She’d even gotten to know them a little and had learned not to make fun of the mentally ill anymore, and not just because she was one of them. She no longer referred to them as “crazies” like she had before she’d become a resident. Mentally ill people had problems that needed special care and treatment, and it didn’t help them a bit to use demeaning labels or to treat them like jokes. People who were mentally ill needed help, and as far as Kelly could tell, Dr. Sanderlyn, Dr. Arndt, and the rest of the crew—even mean Nurse Agnes—did a pretty fair job of providing it. Though Dr. Arndt continually tried new ways to treat her, Kelly believed herself to be beyond hope.

“Kelly? It’s Dr. Arndt.” Her voice came over the speaker. “Are you awake? May I come in?”

She always asked, but even if Kelly didn’t answer, she’d eventually come in. Dr. Arndt wanted Kelly to call her Kara during their sessions, but Kelly had trouble doing that. Arndt was her doctor, not her best bud, and it made her uncomfortable. It must have been one of those respect-your-elders things. Kelly pretended to wake up and waved her in. The door opened and dragged over the gray padded floor as the doctor entered.

Dr. Arndt was about Kelly’s height, with short light-brown hair and robin’s-egg-blue eyes that somehow reminded Kelly of the warm rays of the sun she hadn’t felt in forever. Arndt was an optimist who never considered failure in treating her patients. Kelly liked her and at the same time felt sorry for her. Even as Kelly languished in her padded cell, drawing ever closer to death, Dr. Arndt never stopped seeking the cure. If any of Arndt’s patients ever died at the clinic, Kelly was certain the doctor would have a breakdown of her own. Optimists have everything to lose.

Kelly tried to remember the feeling of sunlight on her skin but came up empty. Her world seemed cold and gray now, a place where fear devoured her mental being one bite at a time. Even if they let her out of the padded room today, the sunny courtyard was off limits to her. Access to the courtyard from the activity room was blocked by a thick glass wall and a locked door. The best she could hope for was to enjoy the sun vicariously through the plants on the other side of the glass where heat from the building maintained a relatively warm temperature that allowed non-native tropical species to thrive during the fall and winter in Northern Virginia. Kelly had only been in the courtyard once during her stay, which was the only true sunlight she’d felt in a long time. Immediately after, she’d hovered, and they hadn’t let back her in since. Were they afraid she might rise through the open roof and float away?

“Are you still doing your exercises?” Dr. Arndt sat on the floor with a clipboard in front of the bed, like they were having a sleepover or something. She always tried to make Kelly feel at home, though her boss, Dr. Sanderlyn, had limited any contact Kelly could have with her family to only once a month. That really hurt. Once a week had been hard at first, but it gave her something to look forward to. Once a month sucked. Kelly glanced at the door and saw it was slightly ajar. A quick scan told her Mr. Patrick was waiting outside in case she had another “monstrous” outbreak.

Kelly nodded. “One hundred pushups a day, two hundred sit-ups, two hundred mountain climbers, and five hundred jumping jacks. I take all day to get them done, especially the pushups, but I do them every day.”

“I’m pleased you came up with the idea to work out while you’re a patient here. The physical activity is good for you.”

“It makes me exhausted and I sleep. Of course, I still have the dreams.”

“Did you have them last night?” she asked. Kelly nodded. “Same ol’ same ol’?”

“The mansion, of course. I don’t know why I keep dreaming about it so much, but that’s the way it is.” Kelly looked away and then back. “How long before I see my family again?”

“Two weeks. But Josh will be here on Friday, I’m sure. He certainly has great connections.”

Kelly smiled. Josh had great connections all right. His father was the Secretary of Defense and was the head of the department that oversaw the activities and investigations of the American Security Administration. She didn’t know what the relationship was between the ASA and Sunnyside, but whenever the ASA told Dr. Sanderlyn to jump, he basically asked, How high? Josh had wanted to see her every week, which meant every Friday, and he’d told his dad who told the ASA to make it happen, and they did. The first time he showed up Kelly had thought Nurse Agnes was going to have a conniption. That mean old nurse was still furious that a high school kid had been given permission to see one of their patients on a weekly basis, when the patient’s own family wasn’t allowed to see her more than once a month. And a boyfriend no less! Dr. Sanderlyn wasn’t happy about it either, but Kelly didn’t see him much, so she didn’t get inside his mind to find out what was going on.

“I’m glad he does,” said Kelly, unable to hide the smile. “I’m not sure I could survive this without him.”

“You could, would, and will,” said Dr. Arndt. “So which floor were you on in the mansion this time?”

“First.”

“Still? Anything new?”

“No. I tried going out of order and opened the second door on the right first. Chris chopped himself in the forehead with a hatchet, like always. Then the tree grew out of his face and grabbed me, but I got away, or it let me go, I don’t know which, so I went back to the first door on the right. Going out of order didn’t help.”

“Angie and the meat grinder again?”

Kelly nodded. She cringed.

“Where next?”

“I just ran the rest of the night. The guy on the horse came after me inside the mansion, like always, chased me up to the third-floor balcony, and forced me to jump off. I woke up before I landed. I hate the feeling of falling in a dream.”

Kara checked her notes on the clipboard. “That should have been about three-thirty this morning. Same time as always. You keep a tight schedule, that’s for sure.” She chuckled. Kelly offered a lame smile, but her eyes were too exhausted to smile along with the rest of her face.

“When will they stop, Dr. Arndt? I’m so sick of bad dreams I could vomit.”

“Don’t start that again. It’s difficult to clean up on these padded floors, and the smell! To answer your question, I believe the dreams will stop when you’ve opened all the doors. You said there are hundreds of doors, but you’ve never opened more than two.”

“I opened the first door on the left once, remember?”

The doctor checked her notes. “Ah, yes. The giant tentacles grabbed you and pulled you into a room that was under water.”

“Drowning sucks, too, let me tell you.”