It had only been a year.
I simply couldn’t believe the change. It was as if, when all the old buildings were bulldozed and carried away, the hill had swallowed the foundations whole.
Over here I saw an overgrown stone wall, and over there I picked out a leftover pile of bricks. Along the gravel strip, hanging over the edge of a ditch, there were stacks of old tires. I didn’t know what the old tires were from, and I didn’t know why there was a decrepit washing machine beside a big tree, so I was forced to conclude that people had started using the place for a dump.
I tried to remember how far up to go and what the rough layout of the place had been, but it wasn’t until I reached the top of the hill that anything looked familiar. Where the incline leveled out, a set of foundations remained uncovered; these were the larger buildings—the gymnasium, the dormitories, and an administration building. Only rubble remained, but at least the field was relatively clear and the trees were taller, higher above and not dangling down to obscure my field of vision.
I parked there, wondering exactly how I was going to turn around and leave again, but not so worried this time that I might be spotted by the cops.
No one was going to spot anything up there now. Even if there was trouble, it was highly unlikely that a passerby would come to my assistance. I didn’t like the thought of it, but I’d made a stupid promise and I intended to keep it.
I turned off the car, and immediately felt the weight of the place. It felt heavy, and bleak, and wet—even though it hadn’t rained in over a week. And it was deeply dark, despite the hour. Between the leaves, thin orange columns of light spilled to the forest floor; but the canopy was laced tight, and I felt like this could have been late afternoon instead of late morning.
I took a deep breath and climbed out of the vehicle.
My boots sounded loud on the knotted, gravelly ground beside my tires. I shuffled my feet a little just to make that noise, so I could hear it and not feel so alone. Except for my intrusion, the place was perfectly quiet. No birds, no leaf-scattering lizards or squirrels.
“It must be me. Or the car,” I thought aloud. It must have been the sound of my engine that scattered the wildlife.
All around me, the slow, insistent growth of vines, the wheedling of roots, and the spreading of ferny branches marked the hill’s progress in reclaiming the site. Without intervention, another two or three years ought to hide the human scarring of development altogether if someone didn’t buy the property and build there.
I closed the car door and walked to the nearest overgrown slab of concrete. I couldn’t remember if it was the foundation of the gymnasium or the main administration building, but either way I was mildly surprised by how small it appeared. Without the trappings of walls and ceilings, the naked under-flooring looked like it could not possibly have supported the three-story structure I remembered.
I stepped up onto it, that bare gray dance floor beneath the trees. I wasn’t sure why. For some reason I felt the need to get off the ground, away from the carpet of nature. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to stand on it at all.
“Hello?”
I could’ve said it louder, but then I might have gotten an answer—and I didn’t really want an answer. In my perfect world, in my perfect morning, I would stand there feeling stupid for a few minutes and then leave…with nothing eventful to report.
“Hello?” I asked again.
The sound of my voice was too loud, even though I was deliberately keeping it down. The silence was thorough and thick.
“Anyone?”
Around me the quiet air moved. It shifted in a mass, all at once. It drew closer to me and I retreated, back-stepping along the concrete slab until I stood nearly in the center.
I remembered the heartbeat—the angry, rhythmic pulse of syllables that had followed me once before. I remembered it, but I didn’t hear it.
I remembered something else too, when the shadows began to come forward. I remembered that this place was once a hospital where people went to die. A figure popped into my head, a number I’d read a long time ago: two thousand people.
I didn’t see anything solid, not even a shape I could definitely pick out as human. Along the encroaching tree line blackness shifted—not hard, not fast. Freeze-frame slow, and stilted. If I looked away and then back again, I couldn’t swear I’d seen anything at all. But if I stared, and if I could keep from blinking, I saw it.
Them.
More than one, whatever they were, dragging themselves out from between the moss-covered trunks. Not close. They stayed back. Whether their caution was brought on by fear or weakness, I couldn’t tell. But they stayed back, and I stayed barely on the mobile side of fright.
It wasn’t about them. I wasn’t afraid of them. Not very.
I was afraid that any moment I’d hear the heartbeat. But the heartbeat didn’t come, and as the seconds passed and I remained unmolested, I relaxed just enough to try speaking again.
“I’m looking for Rachel,” I told the long, lumpy shadow.
The shadow did not respond in any manner that I could discern.
“I think she was here. Before they tore everything down, I mean. There was something else here. Something…definitely not like you. Something fast, and mean. It followed me. It talked to me. Can you talk to me?”
Nothing answered—not with any cue that I could hear or see.
“Is there anyone here who can talk to me? Anyone who would like to? I can hear you, if you talk. I can listen. Christ, what are you?”
I closed my eyes for a count of ten, thinking maybe I could draw the presences out by showing some vulnerability. It didn’t work. The line of tangible emptiness stayed where it was, at least at first. Then I saw that the mass was withdrawing in the same drawn-out, incremental fashion with which it had arrived.
Them, I thought again. Not “it.”
Within a minute or two, they were all but gone. And in a minute more, I heard the first bird sing since I’d arrived. The feathered thing whistled high and sweet from a few feet into the woods, and at the edge of the dormitory foundation a pair of lizards chased one another into the grass.
Nothing.
I glanced around one last time for good measure. When I left, after some careful vehicular maneuvering, I was reasonably confident that the poltergeist of Pine Breeze had abandoned the place to its ruin.
Whether or not it had been Malachi’s mother I might never know, but my suspicion was that the bitter shade could have been no one else. I toyed with the idea of feeding Malachi a line out of kindness. I could tell him that I’d seen other ghosts there.
Two thousand people, wasting away.
I could tell him that some other specter had told me his mother’s name, and that she was gone. He’d believe me, as likely as not. It was true, as likely as not. It would be less a lie than an educated guess.
I went back to my car. My purse was on the passenger’s seat. I fished my cell phone out of the inner pocket and dialed the church in St. Augustine, but no one answered. An answering machine with a cheery greeting encouraged me to leave a message, so I did: a short and sweet one.
“Malachi, I went to Pine Breeze.”
I looked out my window over the empty area where the sanitarium had once stood, and I made a decision that I knew I might come to regret. But I couldn’t tell him the truth, because the truth was only that there was nothing to know. It might not have been the right thing to do, but I was tired of hurting people. So I said, “Look, Malachi, I asked around up here at the old sanitarium. You don’t need to worry about your mother. She’s gone on.”
Then I held my breath and whispered into the phone, “Come up to Tennessee if you want—you and Harry. We’ll make a weekend of it. Maybe—maybe I’ll even introduce you to Lu and Dave.
“Your mother’s found her peace. And we should make ours.”