Briarpatch by Tim Pratt by Tim Pratt Read Free Book Online Page B

concentration. Unless I really try, I just sort of . . . skim along the surface of things. I don’t know if I got any of the other powers that come with the standard ghost package. I tried things out while I was waiting for you to wake up, and I haven’t had any luck flying or walking through walls or possessing people or puking ectoplasm, but I think I could handle rattling chains in an attic, snuffing candles at dramatic moments, opening kitchen cabinets, and throwing china plates at a wall. All of which I could have done when I was
alive
, too, so it’s a shit deal.” The chair started moving again.
    “I’m sorry,” Orville rasped. “You sound so angry. Maybe being angry is why you can’t . . . move on.”
    “I can’t
move on
because I was given shitty directions, and you’re damn right I’m angry. I
did
figure out that I can’t get too far away from you, for whatever reason—maybe our souls got tangled up when we both jumped, who knows? I tried to leave the hospital a while ago and everything got . . . fuzzy. I started to lose coherence, to forget who I was and what I was supposed to be doing, and I think if I’d pushed on much farther I would have just fallen apart. Worst of all, it
hurt
, like being swarmed by fire ants, which is apparently the only really powerful physical sensation I can experience anymore. The pain went away when I came crawling back to you so it looks like we’re stuck together. Which is why I’m taking you on a little trip.”
    Orville looked around. The hospital corridor just outside his room had been brightly lit, but the woman had guided him down other hallways, and once into what looked like a broom closet, except they’d slid through the chemical-smelling darkness and out the other side into another corridor. Now the chair rolled down a dim hallway, fluorescent lights overhead sputtering, more than half of them burned out. The floors were filthy and slick, and occasionally the wheels made a squelching noise, as if rolling through organic debris. They passed doorways framing darkness, and sounds emerged from some of them—bells, whispers, weeping. “This isn’t the hospital,” Orville said, and his mind felt clearer than before, and the pain below his waist was more insistent.
    “Well. I could argue semantics with you. This
is
the hospital, or maybe a part of the hospital that was never built, except in a place where there was a nuclear war or some
Omega Man
scenario with flesh-eating vampires living in the wreckage. It’s sort of like the mad whimsy wing of the hospital.”
    “You’re kidnapping me,” Orville said, feeling dumb for not realizing it before, drugs or not. “Take me back! I’m
hurt
!”
    “Yes, you’re hurt. But I’m not kidnapping you, I’m helping you.” Orville tried to twist around to look at her, but moving his head too quickly made everything spin. A sudden stabbing pain in his chest made him gasp—hadn’t the woman said something about broken ribs? God, it was like having shards of broken metal inside him. What had he done to himself? What would become of him? He thought of grabbing the wheels, turning the chair around and trying to get back to his room, but there was a sound like distant howling, and the corridor was very dark, and he was lost, and afraid.
    Suddenly there were lights again, and the hallway was clean and wide and brightly lit. Everything was chrome and translucent white plastic, and the tiles on the floor cycled in colours, from orange to yellow to green. It was like some spaceship sickbay from an unusually stylish vintage science fiction film.
    “This is better,” she said. “I was worried there for a minute, when it was so dark. Ismael showed me this place once, when I got hurt on one of our exploring trips, but I wasn’t sure I remembered the way.”
    “Where am I? Who are you? What is this?” Orville was rapidly becoming sober. He felt balanced on a sharp edge, a brief window when he was lucid but not yet