Chapter 10: Disappearances (Patreon)

Chapter 10: Disappearances

There was a knock on the door, but it wasn’t for Tina.

Moonlight beamed through a shutterless window near the head of her bed. The night was quiet, so the rasping of knuckles echoed in the empty halls of the psychiatric ward. Tina discerned quickly it must be coming from two doors down. That’s Maria’s room. Tina didn’t know the Shura personally, since she was a bit of a loner in the ward. She also wouldn’t get to know her any better.

What had first started as a prank, a way to scare others, was now a reality: patients were disappearing. No one knew who was taking them or where. Some thought it was an Ashura—wild superstition. Folks always blamed them first whenever something bad happened— some suspected one of the others had finally worn out the last screw in their head, and was picking them off one by one. Whatever, or whoever it was, only one fact was known.

If a knock came to your door at night, by morning, your bed would be empty.

The wardeners—that’s what the patients of the ward called themselves—had asked the hospital staff what was happening. The standard response was: ‘they were sent home.’ Which didn’t make any sense. This was a ward for crazy people. You didn’t just get to ‘go home’ on a whim.

Nurse Kaylee, a nurse who’d worked here for twenty years and whom all the wardeners loved, had let something slip. ‘The hospital is testing a new treatment method,’ she’d said. Kaylee was let go the next day. However, no one saw her leave. Since then, staff had stopped answering, and wardeners had stopped asking.

Thank the Primals it’s not me. Tina rotated her head deeper into her pillow. She sniffed. Thinking like that made her a terrible person. She was aware of that. But what else what she supposed to think? She was a coward. Running away and hiding was what she did. It’s what got her in here in the first place.

There were no footsteps to signal the mystery party’s leave, and so Tina spent the night twisting and turning, hoping to some far away deities she wasn’t next.

“I saw one of them,” the crazy old lady known to fellow wardeners as Annie said the next morning.

They were in the grand cafeteria. Hardwood tables arranged in rows of eight filled the centre of the hall, with a walking buffet on the right. Walking between the benches was a robot. The contraption of magic was dutifully sweeping the floors and cleaning tables, making sure the canteen was ready for the newcomers. The wardeners nicknamed him Jimmy, the sweeper.

Jimmy sauntered up to Tina.

“Are you finished dining, ma’am?”

Tina handed him the leftovers of her lunch, sausages and potatoes, without taking her eyes of Annie. She was huddled around the Shura with a few others, everyone listening intently to Annie’s story.

“You lie,” someone said.

“Nu—uh, they walked past my door on the way back,” Annie said.

Tina’s cowardly heart skipped a beat. Past her door? More than once, Tina had thought of creaking her door open and taking a peek, but she never got past the edge of her bed exactly for this reason. What if they heard her step towards the entrance? Her palms started sweating just thinking of turning the doorknob.

Nothing wanting to miss a syllable Annie said, Tina leaned forwards, coming close enough to smell the odour of salt wafting of Annie. She probably hadn’t been washed in days. It wasn’t a matter of neglect from the nurses; rather, Annie always created a scene when it was time for her bath. Her Shinoa heritage was maybe playing a role in that. They were a clan of insect-like Shuras, making bathing a foreign concept to them. However, another explanation, one Tina believed more strongly, was that Annie just liked the attention that came with being difficult.

“You’re bullshitting,” Jorge said. The man had a scar running from the upper corner of his right brow down to his chin. He was a veteran. “Stop saying things to scare the kids.”

Tina and the others weren’t kids. She was seventeen, and the youngest between them was sixteen. But most Shuras here were old. Well. ‘Old’ for pureblood standards, at least, because Shuras lived longer than purebloods. The average age was somewhere around sixty-five. Seventeen looked like a child when you reached that milestone.

Annie waggled her digit, which was more like a long, thin strip than a real finger.

“They were wearing white.”

Annie stared at each group member in turn.

“And?” Jake, one of the audience members, finally said when the silence continued for too long.

Annie crossed her arms.

“That’s all I saw.”

The group let out a collective groan.

“I told you she was horseshitting,” Jorge said.

Most of the others stood up from their impromptu theatre seats and walked off, shaking their heads.

“What? It was dark!” Annie yelled.

“You’re an insect for crying out loud,” someone shouted.

“Quarter insect,” Annie corrected, her singular antenna whipping back and forth.

“Whatever.”

Tina stayed seated. She couldn’t help herself. Every drop of information she squeezed out of Annie may help her down the line.

“Did you really see them?” Tina asked.

Annie turned toward her.

“I did. There were two of them.”

“Two?” Tina scratched her chin.

Why would they need two people? Maybe because they need to restrain us. She’d questioned that before. How come the only noise made before someone disappeared was a knock? Though most of them were sick, crazy, or both, they were still Quarters and Halfs. Most of the staff was pureblood. The least we can do against a pureblood is scream, right?

“I glimpsed something else, too,” Annie said.

“What?” Jorge had stayed as well. It was him who asked the question.

Annie interlinked her two index fingers.

Tina frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Chains,” Annie whispered. Her voice was low, so low it took a full second before the words registered in Tina’s brain.

“Chains?” Tina asked. “Did they drag Maria out in chains?”

Annie shook her head.

“It was a symbol on their robes.”

“Yeah right, I’ve had enough of this.” Jorge jumped out of his chair. “I’m not listening to another word coming out of your mouth.”

The woman cackled.

“Run away, old man. Run but you cannot hide.”

Jorge gave her the finger.

“You Shinoans are nothing more than godless animals.”

Whatever retort Annie had to that died in the crib, because Jorge was already out of earshot, leaving Tina alone with Annie.

Annie raised her nose at the veteran’s back. “He certainly is fast for his age.”

“The chains,” Tina said, attempting to bring Annie back on topic, “what do they mean?”

Annie only uttered two words: ‘the liberator’.

Huh? The Libera—ah. Now Tina understood why Jorge had left. Most Quarters and Halfs in Dagon were stern believers. Tom, an old friend of Tina she used to do drugs with explained it to her like so: ‘It’s a way for them to cope with their bestiality. Also, it shows the purebloods they are on their side.’

The liberator, Tina thought. She’d been too busy committing petty theft as a kid to pay attention in church. But she remembered the name of the God who carried that moniker. Mokshi, Primal of Liberation and sister of Kali.

Annie laughed, her teeth snapping like jaws.

“She’s coming to liberate us!” Annie yelled through the mess hall.

“Shut up you wench.” Emma, one of the younger wardeners, hissed. “You’re making us all afraid for nothing.”

But Annie didn’t listen. She was in her own world and continued screaming about how they were all going to die. She started scratching her cheeks. Green puss splattered on the floor as she tore her skin open with her nails.

Most of the people near them shuffled their chairs to the right and left, creating distance between themselves and the Shura. Tina couldn’t take her gaze off the woman. Annie unsettled her. She was crazy like the best of the wardeners, but there was a pinch of true terror hidden underneath her skin. An emotion that transcended rational thought. Even as the hospital guards came in and dragged Annie off to her room, Tina couldn’t help but think that Annie was right.

The guards hauled her through the door, and the Quarter latched onto the doorcase, struggling for a final breath.

“They won’t take me! I’m prepared.”

Annie’s voice burned in Tina’s ears, the words clinging to the air. They won’t take her, Tina thought. Tina believed her.

When nightfall draped the ward in shadows, a knock echoed on Annie’s door. Annie was gone the following morning.

The psychiatric ward got more quiet after Annie’s disappearance. Tina wasn’t the only one who’d felt Annie’s conviction. And to see someone like that vanish overnight…it spooked the wardeners. Old men stopped playing cards at the dinner table, and the women no longer gossiped.

There was only one thought on everyone’s mind: who would be next?

Some could no longer take it and tried to run. It didn’t work. Clementine was overseen day and night and heavily so. The hospital was in the middle of a moat. Two watch towers guarded the only entrances to the hospital: a set of drawbridges, one of which was reserved for emergency vehicles. There were also security cameras strapped to every corner of the building.

After two running attempts, security guarded the exit to the ward.

Next, patients tried to call their family. The problem was that they were in a ward for crazy people for a reason. For many, it was the umpteenth time they dialled their relatives with some speech about how weird things were happening and they need to be rescued immediately.

Tina didn’t think Diana—her mother would pick up the phone. Twice had her brother, Michael, caught her out in the city in an abandoned building with junkies and criminals. The third time, he had taken their mother with him, which finally convinced her Tina was a lost cause. She sent her to hospital’s revalidation centre.

Tina didn’t blame them, because the therapy had helped. Tina’s mind was clearer these days, without all the narcotics in her system. In fact, she enjoyed daytime more than nighttime now. She didn’t want it to pass.

However, a weed grew even though you didn’t love it, and night always found its window.

Tina was back in her room. She palmed a framed picture that laid on the table next to her bed. The photo showed her family. Tina, wearing her favourite yellow ribbon—she’d lost it during a robbery, sadly—Michael, who wouldn’t have been able smile if you paid him for it, and her mother with that permanent worry-frown on her face. Her father wasn’t in the picture. Poetic.

Recent events played in her head, making her feet grow heavy. She’d told Michael what was happening. He didn’t believe her, not fully. Even so, he said he’d come visit this weekend—which was in two days—and ‘sniff things out’ as he liked to say. It was a self-deprecating joke, since they were both Gano Halfs.

But Michael coming over was all Tina needed. Despite everything she’d done, she knew her brother loved her more than anything. He would get her out of here. Her belief in this was so ironclad, one of the gods must’ve penned it into the foundations of her brain at birth. But some foundations were built on sand, and so Tina couldn’t help but think of darker futures that evening.

What if he is too late? What if my turn is tonight?

The whirling unease consumed Tina’s stomach, making it difficult for her to fall asleep. Annie plagued her dreams. Her screams. The woman had been crazy, but she had been kind. In her own way. Tina hoped nothing bad had happened to Annie. Horrors continued to torture Tina. It wasn’t until late into the night that her fantasies took on the form of fonder memories.

They didn’t last long.

Through the curtains of sleep, she heard a sound. Tina unfurled her eyes, slowly, listening if she had heard right. She had. The sound returned, sending a shiver down her chest.

There was a knock on the door. This time it was on hers.