“Shut up!”
She bit her lip and threw all of her weight against the lever again. It didn’t move.
Scraape!
The sound came from the other side of the doors. Cassie’s throat turned to sand. She should leave, run back the way she’d come, seek solace in that weird room where she woke up.
She took one step backward and spied a fat button on the wall near the doors.
The release!
Before she could hit the button, the doors clanged loudly and opened inward. Quickly she stepped into a wide, windowless room with white walls and tile flooring. A mist seeped from a nearby stairwell where an exit sign pulsed red. Within the center of the room were rows of wheeled stretchers, twenty-one beds, all of which were draped and hiding what appeared to be bodies.
Is this some kind of bizarre morgue?
Heart thudding wildly, Cassie started to back up, but the swinging doors banged shut. No! She pushed on the lever, but the doors were locked tight, and though she looked desperately on the wall for a release button, there was none.
Like it or not, she was locked in.
Dear Jesus . . .
Why, oh, why had she come here?
But it was more than just idle curiosity that had lured her down that long hallway. She’d felt as if she were being lured to this chilled room.
Rotating slowly, anxiety tightening her muscles, she eyed the unmoving beds. Were they all occupied by the dead? Or were some alive? Were they even human? She didn’t want to find out, didn’t want to know. On quiet feet she quickly edged to the stairwell. All the while she was tense, feeling as if she were running out of time, that if she didn’t get out now, she might lose her opportunity.
She reached the stairwell and found another locked door with no release.
“Damn it,” she whispered through clenched teeth, and tried again, slamming her weight against the levers. Cold metal rattled loudly but didn’t give.
“Son of a—”
Scraape!
The horrid sound was right behind her.
She whirled.
There in the far corner the nurse in her white cap and uniform, her blue cape stark against the white walls, materialized as if from vapor. “She’s alive,” the nurse whispered in a low, raspy voice.
“Your sister is alive.”
Cassie backed up. Oh. Dear. God.
From the nurse’s earlobes, the red cross earrings glittered before turning into tiny red globules. The red drops splashed from her lobes to the shoulders of her uniform, running down her white dress, staining it red.
Shivering, Cassie swallowed hard and kept inching backward.
Scraape!
Wheels loose, one of the gurneys began rolling, hard metal casters scratching loudly against the tile. As it wheeled by, the draped body’s head and shoulders raised, the sheet sliding to the floor.
Allie’s bloodless face stared straight at her. “Cassie,” she hissed through blue lips that barely moved.
No!
“Help me . . .”
A scream echoed through the morgue.
Cassie blinked awake.
Her heart was trip-hammering. The scream she’d heard had come from her own lips. Sweating, nearly hyperventilating, she was lying on her own bed in her apartment in LA. Dear God, it was five-thirty in the morning, not quite dawn. The shadowed room slowly sharpened into view and she told herself to calm down. It was just a bad dream, a nightmare, nothing more.
But the vision had been so real and surreal.
She let out her breath slowly, her hands fisting in the sheets as she forced herself to think rationally, to not freak out, to take control and—
Scraape!
She shrieked, spinning on the bed as the sound seemed to reverberate through the walls. “What the hell?” Leaping from the mattress, she stared at the window positioned over her headboard and heard the sound again, but this time she saw the tree branch moving to scratch the glass.
Her shoulders slumped in relief.
That was all.
Nothing sinister.
Nothing evil.
Just a damned branch moving in the wind.
And the reason she was so cold? The air conditioner was working overtime, blowing cold air through the room. That was one of the problems with this place, the temperature. Always either hot or cold.
“You’re a freak show,” she muttered as she walked into the hallway and flipped the switch to turn off the cool air. Now fully awake, she made her way to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator and reached inside for a bottle of water.
