#afterwardfic

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Afterward Moodboards (2/5): Sarah Reese

Chapter One posted August 5th

[how2bake]

this guy was so funny his best weapon was calling for help to his evil girlfriend who stabs and kills and murders and his biggest struggle is also having to manage his girlfriend from killing and stabbing people. and he cried a lot. i think he won the game and afterwardfs was super depressed bc his murder girlfriend died as well even though he didnt like her that much

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Afterward (11/13)

By some miracle, they all make it April’s car. Sarah throws herself in the backseat, settles across it and almost buckles a seatbelt before remembering that she doesn’t need one anymore. April starts driving before Will’s done his, though, and he doesn’t seem too interested in doing it. No, he’s clutching the biohazard bag and shuddering his way toward hyperventilation. Sarah acts on instinct, reaching around him and focusing on the static that fills what isn’t her body anymore. She manages to grab his seat belt and buckle it for him, the click feeling so much louder than it ever has before.

“I…”

“It’s Sarah,” April says firmly. “I heard her before we got out. She’s here, even if we can’t see her.”

Will makes a strange choked noise. “How do we know she’s not…”

“Not like Connor?” Saying the name makes Will wince. “Because she just buckled your seatbelt.”

Sarah nods, although they can’t see her. She wishes they could. This feeling of being completely invisible is enough to drive anyone crazy, even if they weren’t already made violent by outside forces, like Connor has been. But at least she can still do some things to assist them, and hopefully ensure that the heart is destroyed in a way that will end the destruction.

She’s jerked from her thoughts when a loud crashing sound shakes the road, the car, echoes perilously and almost steals control of the car. Will looks out the back windshield at the same time as she does, and suddenly, the big shadow of the hospital is no longer as large.

“Holy shit.”

“What?” April won’t take her eyes off the road, taking care not to kill them on their way. 

Light refracts off tears clinging to Will’s cheeks, more coming before the first ones actually make it to his jaw. “Med is gone.”

“We can’t worry about that right now.”

But they deserve to be allowed to grieve, Sarah thinks. Anyone who was still in that building is probably dead. Their coworkers- friends- must’ve been in there trying to help stranded patients when the shaking got bad. And this is somewhere they’ve built a life. It’s natural, healthy to be upset. Maybe April has a point, though, that there isn’t time to cry yet. Not when they still have the heart with them, not when it has yet to be destroyed.

“The dog park near your apartment is our best bet,” April says firmly. “It won’t be too busy in the middle of the day, and it’s mostly grass. It might take us time to dig the hole though. I’ll start at it while you get gas and a lighter. We’ve gotta burn it.”

“Don’t use gas! You can’t control it. Burn the heart before you bury it, there’s an incantation in my notes,” Sarah hisses.

Will nods and looks into the backseat, staring right through her. “We heard that. We’ll do it. God, it’s weird talking back to the voices. When I was hearing Connor’s, I thought I was crazy.”

He laughs, but it’s like broken glass and makes Sarah want to start crying, if she could anymore. He’s been through a lot. But April, she just stares coldly at the road and drives like nothing is wrong. It’s the easiest way to do things, Sarah supposes. The only way to keep herself from fully comprehending what’s just happened, especially given the blood still all over her. Sarah’s blood. It hasn’t dried yet, is still bright red and fresh and sticky. 

Will she ever get a burial beyond beneath all the rubble of Gaffney’s remnants?

“Does this mean Connor’s gone, for good?”

“It’s for the best,” Sarah answers. “He can move on now, and he won’t be tied to this anymore. He’ll be happier.”

“But what about me?”

What about him. What about the people left behind. The people who want their loved ones so desperately, who never want to say goodbye, who don’t know how to cope without someone anymore. There are things that anyone can do to cope with their grief- visit graves, speak to the empty air, pray, do things to honor their loved one’s memory. But it’s not that simple. Some things leave their mark. Pain is not linear, and neither is grief.

No one will be grieving Sarah. 

April might, but it won’t be the way someone grieves a loved one. It’ll be the human guilt everyone feels when they witness a death. She’ll move on. There’s no one close enough to Sarah left in the world for her to be mourned by, and maybe that’s for the best.

As they approach what must be the dog park, the sky darkens. It’s not too late in the afternoon- barely past midday, as a matter of fact- but an ashy purple blooms over the bright blue, likely all the debris from the collapsed hospital making its way into the air the way these things often do. It’s like something out of one of those 9/11 documentaries Sarah watched every year in grade school. 

“They don’t really want to do this.”

Sarah turns her head to the side and it’s Connor, still stained, looking at Will with an almost calm, pleasant expression written across his face. He’s following his heart. It’s almost funny, but Sarah can’t bring herself to laugh right now. This is something too serious for that. He  thinks he’s funny, though, thinks he’s worth the smile when he’s the one who fell prey to all this first.

“They don’t want me gone. Especially Will. I’m the one who takes care of him when he doesn’t do it himself. He needs me, he wants me here. They can’t get rid of me.”

If only it was that simple. Connor can’t even see the toll he’s taken on the world. “They have to, and they will.”

At that, Connor’s face contorts and he reaches into April’s chest, arm going through the back seat. She starts coughing, can barely control the car. Will’s screaming. Outside the windows, the world is disoriented, and this is just terrifying.

But now, Sarah can stop him. She grabs his wrists and yanks them away from the front seat, holds them as tightly as she can manage while he curses at her and threatens her and tries to wrestle his way free. She has the upper hand now, though, and there’s very little he can do about it.

“Connor’s here,” she says, and hopes they can still hear her. “He’s really angry. You need to destroy the heart.”

“We’re almost to the dog park,” April replies. “Five minutes.”

“Can you go faster?”

Connor gets the upper hand, then. Pushes Sarah away from him and leans into the front seat to grab onto Will’s face. Or maybe grab is the wrong word. There’s something tender about the way he cradles his jaw, smiles at him even though it seems Will can’t see him, and ducks his head to kiss him. Will sighs, lets his eyes shut for just a split second before he shakes his head almost violently.

“Connor, I know that’s you. Don’t. I can’t right now.”

In response, Connor sulks into the backseat again and buries his face in his hands. Beneath it all, he’s just scared. They’re all scared. He didn’t deserve this, but it happened, and now they have to put a stop to it, regardless of the person he had been before the world crashed around him so violently. 

The car stops suddenly, Will and April tumbling out of the doors. Sarah follows them without hesitation. So does Connor, but he comes slower, unhurried, seemingly unbothered by the imminent destruction of all he remains to be. He’s said he has no interest in ever moving on. Surely that hasn’t changed in the short couple moments since they last spoke.

April drops to her knees in the muddy grass, starts digging quickly. “How deep, Sarah?”

“Six feet,” she answers.

With a sigh, Will joins her in digging, the biohazard bag sitting beside him and twitching as the heart keeps trying to beat, keeps trying to spread the infection to everywhere within its reach. Sarah starts digging too, in hopes of speeding this along before it’s too late to save those who haven’t already fallen.

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Afterward (1/13)

Summary:  Haunted by the sound of what she assumes to be her miscarried child’s cries, April reaches out to Sarah Reese, known for helping spirits move on and for aiding those who are being haunted. While in Chicago, however, Sarah finds out there are much more sinister things than the ghost of an unborn child lurking at Chicago Med. [Updates Mondays]

Warnings: blood, past miscarriage, death, violence

Pairings: Rexton, Background Rhodestead

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby2

14 January 2019 | 15:45 Local Time

I arrived at Gaffney about fifteen minutes ago, and for now, I’m just watching. I come to hospitals a lot, but never like this. Superstitious doctors, and occasionally nurses, ask me to come take a look. I’ve been to Gaffney before because of a “cursed room” that no one would use. But this is different. An emergency nurse, April Sexton, called me, but not the way I’m usually brought to hospitals. She called me for personal gain, not for the patients.��

She’s a good nurse with a soft golden aura. She’s focused, and kind, and cares about the patients more than her own pride, unlike one of the doctors. I can’t see his name from here1, but he is very argumentative with the other staff, jumpy, and quick to raise his voice. He has the strongest and darkest energy about him. He’s a man in grief. I hope to be able to help him while I’m here, but there’s no guarantee he could even tell me who he lost.

1[Addendum 14 January 2019 | 16:03 Local Time]

I later identified this doctor to be Dr. William Halstead.

2[Addendum 15 January 2019 | 21:50 Local Time]

This case is not confined to April’s child. While I’m in Chicago, I am also investigating/treating William Halstead and Connor Rhodes, particularly Dr. Rhodes, as I believe him to be haunting Dr. Halstead.

“Can I help you, miss? Are you sick?”

Sarah closes her notebook and looks up at the woman in front of her. Short black hair curls around her face, frames her kind smile, but she’s sad. She’s so sad, even if she hides it behind her bright eyes and the oversized vest on her body reading “hospital volunteer.”

“I need to talk to April Sexton, please.”

“Uh, yeah… I’ll go get her for you. You are…?”

“A friend.”

The woman nods and disappears, but not for long. It takes all of thirty seconds for her to come back trailed by April, who pats the woman on the back and thanks her by name. Emily. It’s a pretty name. If she remembers correctly, it’s a name meaning eagerness, initiative. Something about Emily is worth investigating, but that’s not why she’s here.

“I’m April, what can I help you with?”

“You called me, about three weeks ago-” Sarah pauses to dig around in her jacket for her phone. That’s where she keeps her appointment lists, things like that. Not her case notes- electronics don’t keep the same way handwriting does when it comes to paranormal experiences. She scrolls through her screen twice before she finds the date of April’s call. “Four. My bad. You called me four weeks ago for closure about your baby. I didn’t find out, is the uh- is the father of your baby around? Or the mother? Or if it’s just you, I get that too, but if there’s anyone I’m missing-”

“No, it’s just me. Let’s go somewhere more private.”

April begins to lead her out of the waiting room, allowing Sarah a chance to look around the emergency department. She would have loved to have been a doctor, if she never fell down this path. At seventeen, she had been looking for medical schools to apply to. Now she’s here, looking around, and she knows she made the right call when she stopped searching. This is a place full of pain, and not much hope or love to balance it out. 

Her eyes catch on the ginger doctor, though. He’s standing in the hallway, looking at a chart but not really seeing it, and for a moment, Sarah sees someone behind him. Shorter, with dark hair and blood splatter on his face. But then the other man is gone, and she knows that’s who he’s mourning. 

“Miss Sexton, who’s that?” she asks, pointing to the doctor.

“You can call me April. And that’s uh, that’s Will.”

Sarah hums and keeps following April all the way to the elevator. It seems they’ll likely be going to another department for this- maybe wherever April lost her baby. That would be OBGYN, if Sarah remembers from the other grieving mothers she’s helped. The babies are always the worst, especially the newborns who never got to come home.

The two of them get their own elevator the whole way up, and in the crisp artificial light, Sarah studies April’s face. Light like this is so rarely flattering, but it shines beautifully off April. Reflects on her cheekbones, sinks into her hair, draws attention to the most beautiful eyes Sarah has ever seen. And her lips seem so soft in this light. Sarah’s mind conjures the sensation of those lips on her own, of cupping April’s face and feeling the angle of those cheekbones dig into the pads of her thumbs.

“Hey.”

The elevator is open, with April standing outside and holding an arm out across the doors to keep them open. She didn’t hear the ding that signalled arrival. Sarah steps out of the elevator, and immediately, she hears it. The crying. Not the way normal babies, living babies, cry, but the way specters do when no one comforts them, because most people don’t even know they’re there. It’s so loud. Sarah almost has to cover her ears, but she forces herself not to. It’s unprofessional.

“You can hear it, can’t you?” April asks. “I can see it on your face.”

Sarah tilts her head a little from side to side, a shrug but not quite. “I hear a lot of things. But the crying? Yeah, I hear them all crying.”

“Them? I only hear one.”

It must be April’s baby, of course it would be the one to latch onto her and she’d be able to hear them even though most people, they don’t hear the spirits unless they’re powerful. But this isn’t an exorcism or a cry for help, but just someone who wants to help their baby move on to whatever comes next. The other plane where most go, but plenty can’t reach on their own. 

“Just around here?”

“No. It uh…” April clears her throat. “It follows me. In the ED, and at home sometimes. I can’t sleep real well a lot of the time.”

They don’t usually follow. But sometimes, spirits- especially the babies- do that. They’re lonely, they’re sad, they’re scared. Sarah nods and follows for now, trying to avoid the way the crying gets louder and louder, or at least tune it out enough to focus on figuring out why April’s being followed, and how to set the baby free.

“If it’s okay, I’d uh, I’d really like to come home with you tonight. Not in like a- not in a like, flirty way, I mean. Um. I just want to get a feeling for uh, for the haunting, you know. See what I can do to help you. If that’s alright with you. I just- I just wanna help, you know.”

Her cheeks are burning. She’s supposed to be better about talking now, especially after all the time she spent trying to correct her anxious stuttering and mumbling. Sarah tries to focus on anything other than April’s face now, even the crying. 

But then April smiles at her, and it’s like putting the stars in the sky, and for a moment the hospital lights seem to be a halo around her head. She reminds Sarah of modern paintings of Mother Mary. Although she isn’t religious herself, she has to do a lot of research because sometimes the people who need her can’t handle any more pain than they already have. They cling to ideas like ghosts are repelled by crucifixes, or that an ibbur must be helped so it can move on, or any number of beliefs fueled by religion. It’s not her place to tell them what’s right, what’s a mistake. And in all reality, she doesn’t know for certain that any of them are wrong in the first place. The point stands either way that she’s put a lot of time and effort into understanding what people believe and knowing how to tell them what they need to hear.

“Of course,” April says, still smiling. She doesn’t seem the type to smile so much. “My shift doesn’t end until ten, though. I can give you my house key and address, though, if you’d like?”

Sarah shakes her head. “No, I need you there, since you’re what the baby is channeling through. I don’t mind waiting. You have my number if you get off early, and I’m sure there’s good I can do in this hospital.”

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Afterward (7/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes

??9 January 2019 | ??:?? Local Time

Thankfully one of the nurses gave me my notebook to write things down before they start doing more tests or decide they need to keep me way too long. I don’t know how much time I’ve lost, but I need to talk to someone in charge. Connor is dangerous to everyone in the hospital, and I need to dispel his spirit sooner rather than later. The next time he lashes out, his victim may not be as lucky as I was. If Dr. Halstead hadn’t been right there, I wonder if I would’ve died.

9[Addendum: 18 January 2019 | ??:?? Local Time]

April later informed me it was the eighteenth, and that I missed roughly two and a half days for treatment of two partially collapsed lungs.

-

For the first hour that Sarah’s awake again, some indeterminate amount of days later, everything is tests and questions and lights in her eyes, all accompanied by a dull ache in her chest from what she’s told is her lungs trying to heal. They have a tube in her side still, draining out into a dish that needs cleaning more often than it gets. She’s still so tired and wheezing, even with the oxygen mask over her face, but she knows she needs to get up and dispel the dangerous grip the thing that took Connor has on this hospital.

But when they start to let her rest again, April comes to visit. She looks exhausted and small, and it makes Sarah’s chest hurt in a completely different way. She reaches out with the hand not filled with needles and tubes. April takes it without hesitation, raises it to her lips to kiss, and that’s the moment when Sarah knows that she has to do everything possible to save April. She’s too good, and she reminds her so much of an angel that it’s unreal. 

“How long was I out?” Her voice is scratchy, clearly unused for a long time.

“Three days,” April answers. “It’s the eighteenth. Your lungs collapsed, and we still can’t figure out why. What happened?”

“Like I said earlier, Connor. I tried to talk to Dr. Halstead, and Connor got in. He tried to kill me, but it’s because he was scared. I can’t give up on him. And I really need to be discharged before anyone else gets hurt.”

Sarah struggles to sit upright in spite of the pain, which has her monitor beeping angrily and April immediately trying to stop her. She needs to get out of bed and find a way to help, not be trapped here to listen to the spirits around her and know that everyone in the building is in danger. When she glances around, she can see the mother holding the baby that’s been haunting April. It must be hell for her, especially when she’s paying Sarah to free her from all that. 

And isn’t that a painful reminder, that she’s being paid to be here, and she doesn’t really have much of a chance with April. But Sarah can’t focus on that right now- she has work to do. So she insists on sitting up and trying to find her coat because it has a lot of important stuff in it. But she can’t find it, an issue that absolutely doesn’t help her right now. And then she hears footsteps approaching, and it’s Will, with Connor over his shoulder.

“I know you didn’t mean it,” Sarah says immediately, her voice still scratchy and a little breathless. “It’s okay, Connor, I just want to help you.”

April and Will share a look over her head- they must not be able to see him this time. But Sarah is used to that, and she ignores them in favor of watching Connor shift his weight, the blood on his face dripping to his jawline. She doesn’t remember seeing that before, and it means she should take a look at his body. And that could be the key to this all, she suddenly realizes. Connor is the host; if his body can no longer support it, then Connor moves on and everyone will be safe.

Sarah grabs April’s sleeve and pulls her closer. “Where’s Connor’s body? I need to see it.”

“You need to rest. You’re really sick,” Will argues.

No. No, she doesn’t and isn’t, and she needs to help people. That’s all she’s good for. It’s her job. They don’t understand how much danger they’re in right now. Connor, and everyone else who’s died in this hospital recently, are an active threat, to the point that this hospital should be evacuated and shut down until the threat is contained. More people could die. They could get hurt. April especially.

“Maybe we should let her,” April says. “This is her expertise. If she says we’re in danger, I think we should believe her.”

In an instant, Connor is behind her and he has his hands in her chest just like with Sarah, and once again, Will is able to see him.

“Tell him to stop!” Sarah cries, struggling to get up and do something, anything to banish him, but she doesn’t have her supplies. “He cares about you, Will, tell him to stop!”

“Stop!”

At Will’s voice, Connor does. He pulls his hands from April’s chest as she collapses forward, coughing but seemingly faring better than Sarah was when it happened to her. Sarah rubs her back, but her eyes are locked on Connor, who stares at Will like he’s waiting to hear something else.

“Stop hurting people,” Will says, sounding so small and sad. “That’s not you, Connor. That’s not the man you were when you died. You saved people, remember?”

Connor doesn’t say anything, but he has this look on his face. Sad, genuine, hurting. Someone who needs to be helped, not just dismissed from the world of the living so he may find peace in a life beyond this one. To see him squishes any anger that Sarah might have had as a result of his earlier actions. He just needs help, like April does. A different kind of help, maybe, but help nonetheless. 

He walks away, leaving the three of them there. Will starts asking April if she’s okay, insisting he listen to her chest in case Connor hurt her like he did Sarah. But already, she’s standing up and regaining her breathing. She’s alright, better off, and now inclined to let Sarah do her job and keep them all safe.

“I can try and discharge you long enough to go see Connor’s body tomorrow morning,” Will says, his voice all crackling autumn leaves and dead tree branches. “Rest tonight. You too, April.”

Then he leaves, and Sarah finds April crawling into the hospital bed beside her. It’s a tight fit, but a reassuring one that makes it impossible to ignore that they’re both alive. This reminds Sarah of what it felt like the last time she had someone to love, way before the accident, and they shared clumsy kisses in her childhood bedroom with curtains drawn tight just in case. This is as peaceful, filled with apprehension, but in a different kind of way. April’s head is a welcome weight on her chest, even if it adds more strain to lungs already complaining of overexertion from her sudden awakening and seeing Connor try to kill someone else.

“We’ll be okay,” Sarah whispers.

She can’t be sure, can’t promise, but it feels like the right thing to say in a moment like this one. There’s nothing else to say. Just as she thinks about that, she registers the silence- the rest of the spirits left when Connor did, providing them this brief respite hold each other and wonder what happens next.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

“It’s my job, April.”

April gets up, bracing her forearms on either side of Sarah’s chest carefully and leans forward. Their noses touch, and there’s so much to look at, so much to admire, but all Sarah can think about is how soft her lips look. A little glossy with chapstick, but plush and like something out of a magazine, the sort of lips Sarah had seen on makeup ads as a child and wondered what they would feel like to kiss.

Her curiosity is finally settled.

The moment April kisses her, the whole world melts away. It’s all warmth and an emotion Sarah can only describe as sunshine. She lifts her hands to do something, and finds one resting on the nape of April’s neck and the other on her back. More than anything, she wants to kiss her until the day she dies. This is bliss. This is what heaven feels like. For the second they part to breathe, it’s like burning to death. But then April is there again and everything is perfect. 

She wants more than she can have, especially when they’re both so fragile. She doesn’t ask, though, merely enjoys what she can at this moment before it’s gone and April probably has a freak out the way Sarah’s last not-quite-girlfriend did the first time they kissed. And the second. Third. Fourth. Last. This is the last thing she wants to think about, but some things, one simply can’t forget. 

When April pulls away, though, she’s smiling and licks her swollen lips. “I wanted to make sure I got the chance to do that.”

Struck speechless, all Sarah can do is nod and allow April to settle back down laying on her chest again. She’s quick to drift off, the steady rise and fall of April’s ribs enough to reassure her that she won’t be dying in the night unless Connor, or worse, the thing that killed him, show up to bare bloodthirsty metaphorical teeth.

The thing is, she knows what’s lurking. It doesn’t have a name, that she can find, but she’s encountered it before. Sometimes a place gets so overwhelmed by negative energy that it gets physical. Then it finds a host- someone already in a lot of pain, someone who wouldn’t be able to move on immediately after death anyways. And with something to anchor it, it destroys everything in its path. When Sarah encountered one for the first time in a small Maine town, it had been around for nearly two hundred years and had killed countless people- mostly children, because they were afraid. This energy, it clings to fear and pain and everything that slowly eats a person alive.

And maybe, just maybe, the real Connor is still in there. It’s possible; he’s only been dead a few months, and his spirit listens to someone he loved in his life. There’s hope he can still be saved, rescued from the infestation and allowed to move on without being destroyed in the cleanse. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a chance, and that’s one Sarah wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for not taking.

When she finally falls asleep, her dreams are a mixture between Connor’s blood stained face and the way it felt to kiss April.

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Afterward (10/13)

Sarah Reese was declared legally dead when her body was located, at approximately 22:53. Her journal does not contain any further passages.

-

The darkness lifts slowly, gradually. When it does, Sarah squints at the face in front of her. It’s April. Tears dripping down her face, her bottom lip quivering, shaking her head and talking although Sarah’s sense of hearing hasn’t entirely returned to her yet. There’s movement behind her. But it’s easier to focus on April. She reaches up to wipe the tears, whatever their cause. 

She sees her own hand lift, but her fingers go straight through April’s cheek, and there’s no reaction. Oh. No, no, no, no, no! Sarah struggles to sit up, staring at the blood all over her clothes that’s dry but still bright red. No. No. When she stands up, she can still see herself, like she’s watching a movie. Her body, more pallid than it should be, completely limp in April’s arms.

“No, no, no, no,” she cries, her voice echoing in her ears. It doesn’t sound right. The only way to describe it is an echo, distant and disconnected like the feeling of static all over her where she should be feeling her clothes, the air, anything. Anything but this. “April!” 

April doesn’t look up. She’s pulled Sarah’s body closer, though, is now kissing all over her face as the sounds of the room start to make themselves heard. Maybe it’s a good thing. She doesn’t know. For as much of her life as she’s spent studying this, nothing could have prepared her for how it feels. And the funny part is, she can’t set herself free because no one can hear her.

“It sucks, doesn’t it?”

Everything goes still, including April’s shaking body, like a wave of deference to Connor’s sudden presence in front of her. There’s new blood on him, and a black stain is spreading on the front of his shirt. The heart. Sarah glances over her shoulder to see Will frozen in the middle of still working to remove the heart.

“They can’t hear you. They can’t see you. They can’t touch you.” Connor’s staring at Will. “But you can hear them. And sometimes they still talk to you, even if they don’t think you’re there.”

“They could hear, see, touch you,” Sarah counters. He had tried to kill April.

Connor hums. “Well, yeah, but that’s because I could latch onto their emotions. It’s easy. Here.”

He grabs Sarah’s wrist and drags her closer to April again. She’s always been able to feel the energy radiating off of people, but right now, it’s different. Stronger. It seems to fill her body and settle into every crack, crevice. Unlike April’s former light, it’s so sad and scared that Sarah feels her own eyes dampen.

“You can use that. Focus on it, and-”

Connor puts Sarah’s hand on April’s cheek, and this time it doesn’t pass through, but settles on the heated skin. She can even feel the tears, although they don’t smear at her touch because they’re existing outside of time right now. 

“You have a lot of power now. The sort of thing that you could never begin to access before, even if you were more awake than a lot of them. It’s better this way, isn’t it?”

“No.” She sniffles and steps back. The room feels too small, and she feels too small, tiny and weak in a way she hasn’t since she was a small child pulling the covers over her head in the middle of a rainstorm. She doesn’t know how to fix this. She doesn’t know if she’s been taken by the thing that killed Connor, or if he’s in the process of trying to take her. Nothing makes sense and all she wants to do is cling to April and make this over. “Put me back.”

“I can’t do that, Sarah. You’re dead. And there’s an adjustment period, but think- you can protect people like never before. You can take care of them. There’s so much you can do, just imagine.”

For at least a moment, Sarah is tempted. All she’s ever wanted to do is help. But this isn’t something she can do, align herself to something so evil. Something that only seeks to destroy. An infestation. And then it hits her.

Connor could touch her. That means she can touch him.

Before he realizes what she’s doing, she grabs his chest and plunges her fingers into his chest. His heart. She can feel it moving, and time restores to normal as she tries to pull, making Connor scream and thrash and try to push her away. But he can’t hurt her. She’s already dead. She keeps a tight hold and watches Will finally get the upper hand over the body, which seems distracted, confused, slow. The focus is on Connor’s spirit. She holds on as tight as she can, pulling, even when Connor’s spirit seems to get bigger, louder, angrier. There’s teeth and blood, and every negative feeling she’s ever experienced comes back, multiplied triple fold.

As his heart keeps struggling in her grip, her mind flashes back to a moment of peace. The moment between the car going off the road and the crash. Sarah had been laughing, singing along. She was so happy. In love. But then it crashes, rolling down the hillside and the only person she had ever really loved wasn’t screaming even though she should be, and Sarah earned the scar on the back of her head. She was lucky she made it. 

“I’ve got it!”

She snaps her attention to Will, who holds the heart reverently in his hands as the body twitches on the floor. He scrambles to find a biohazard bag and contain it, while April keeps crying. Gunshots are ringing out. Connor’s still screaming, but at last, Sarah lets go of him. The very building seems to be shaking.

“April, we need to go,” Will says almost too quietly for Sarah to register. He isn’t aware he’s competing with another layer of screams. “It isn’t safe, and we’ve gotta destroy this thing.”

“Sarah…” April cries. She sounds so broken. 

“We have to leave her, c’mon.”

April shakes her head and clutches Sarah’s body so tightly that she can almost feel it. “No, she’d be alone with-”

“She’d want us to finish this. Get her notebook, and let’s go.”

One last time, April kisses Sarah’s forehead and stands up, prying Sarah’s notes away from her body and grabbing onto Will’s arm as they stumble out. Something intangible tugs at her chest, demands she stay, but she ignores it in favor of following them. The hospital is a disaster. There’s blood smeared on the walls, people running toward exit signs, and at least a couple of bodies on the linoleum floor. She tries not to look at them. She shouldn’t have tried so hard to save Connor, should’ve gone straight for the infestation and saved these people from what had to be a painful death. The building is still shaking badly, getting worse.

“The building’s coming down,” April says, struggling to run as quickly as Will. “What is it they do in earthquakes? Hide in door frames, or-”

“No time, just keep running.”

It’s too easy for Sarah to keep up with them, get ahead of them even. They’re talking in clipped sentences to each other, April flipping frantically through Sarah’s notes. Her voice is borderline hysterical, but in spite of it, she’s glowing. She’s golden, an angel all over again, and it strikes Sarah so hard that she aches, even though she no longer has a body that can feel it. 

“Somewhere with lots of space, not a lot of people.”

“We’re in Chicago,” Will deadpans breathlessly. They’re beginning down the stairs to the ground floor. “It’ll be hours.”

“We can um, we can…” April’s flipping through the pages. 

“Bury it,” Sarah says urgently. “At least ten feet. Then burn the area around it. You need a five foot circle, maybe six. That’s the smallest you can do. But kill it.”

Suddenly, April nearly drops the notebook, looks around frantically. “Sarah? Sarah, I heard your voice. Are you here?”

“April-”

“I’m here,” Sarah says, unsure if it’s even audible. “I’m right here. I’ll help.”

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (5/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes

15 January 2019 | 09:10 Local Time

I have to tell April the truth about the baby. Dr. Halstead needs to know the truth about Connor, and needs to start to free himself from him. And this hospital needs to be cleansed.

-

Back in the hospital, waiting at the nurse’s station and trying to make herself the least visible she can, so as not to draw attention or cause a disruption, Sarah watches for Connor. This is an emergency room, after all, and there are people here in dire need of help, the physical kind, the kind where they could bleed out in the waiting room. She can’t allow someone to be trapped here because her distraction barred them from the help they need.

It takes a while- she has to wait for Will to arrive, looking like he didn’t sleep at all the night before, with Connor’s bloody face at his side. Immediately, his eyes lock on her and his face twists in anger. This time, she feels it. The way the clock speeds up on the wall. The sudden blur around everything as they move so much faster than she can hope to, the clock reaching half-past in the blink of an eye. April’s shift started at six, now the clock is verging on seven, and Connor is staring at her. She doesn’t know if it’s really Connor, though. Not the way he was when he was alive, at any rate. Sarah didn’t know him, but he seems to have been loved, and it’s hard to imagine someone loving an energy so blatantly angry and malicious, to the point that she wonders if he’s beyond saving.

She blinks, and then everything seems normal, except an entire tray of blood vials a nurse had been carrying for blood panels right by where Connor stands collapses to the ground, shattering and spilling and coating the poor woman’s scrubs. She pales and starts spouting apologies, and Connor, Connor looks at her and then he’s gone. 

Sarah needs to take a look at the records, and if she does that now, then she can fix this whole thing sooner rather than later. Every moment she spends failing to learn and plan is another moment where people are hurting. So she finds April, rubs her sweaty palms on her jeans, and asks the question.

“Can I see the records now?”

That gives April pause, and it seems like she’s about to say no, but then she hands Sarah the little tablet in her hand. “I’m about to go on break. You’ve got twenty minutes, okay?”

Twenty. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Sarah nods and rushes to the nearest private space- the women’s restroom. She barricades herself in one of the stalls, grabs her notebook, and starts at Connor’s records. Fifteen minutes for those, maximum, and then she has five to look at the rest. She puts his name into the system, and mostly she gets his employee information from before he died- blood type, birthday, emergency contact. The contact is listed as Dr. Halstead, which means there was definitely more there than meets the eye. But she’s more interested in his death report, because he apparently died here, at the hospital.

The autopsy says inconclusive.

He died during an active hostage situation in the ED a few months ago. The assumption was that he was shot at some point, but they found his body in the doctor’s lounge, tucked into a corner. No injuries. No bullet wounds. Blood dripping from his nose and mouth and eyes. They couldn’t figure out why. 

This is really bad news. Sarah’s heart is beating out of her chest. Her skin is beginning to crawl. She thinks she might be having her first anxiety attack in years. It isn’t safe here. The hospital needs to be shut down, at least for a while, or more people will die, and in far worse ways than what killed Connor. And Connor’s ghost needs to be freed, if not completely exorcised. And it has everything, everything to do with the spirits haunting April. And if Sarah has to hazard a guess, April and Will aren’t the only ones being haunted. 

She forces herself to take a deep breath. She needs to look at the maternity deaths. But she still can’t draw in a good breath, and it hurts, but she has to look. First, she puts in April’s name, and the records tell her when April’s baby’s heart stopped beating, when she had to have it removed from inside her. The baby, the fetus, physically can’t be the spirit. It’s too small to be the one haunting April. Chills dig into her spine, and Sarah still can’t breathe, and the next thing she knows someone is pounding on the stall door and it might be the thing that killed Connor and has this hospital in its vice grip.

“Sarah? It’s just April. Someone heard you panicking and called the nurses for help. Can you unlock the stall?”

Sarah’s hands are shaking. She doesn’t want to drop the tablet, it’s probably really expensive and then April might get in trouble for letting her see the records in the first place. Why didn’t Sarah even think of that when she asked to see them? She still can’t breathe. Her one hand clutches the tablet white knuckled while the other fumbles at the sliding lock, just barely managing to pull it open and let the tartan door swing towards her. It’s just April, just April standing in front of her with the light shining around her silhouette like something off the silver screen. A heroine. An angel.

“Take a deep breath for me, Sarah. You can do that, can’t you. In, like this, copy me. There you go. Out.”

As hard as she tries to listen, her lungs aren’t cooperating and her notebook is on the floor and she’s probably about to drop the tablet. And the thing that killed Connor is still here, not finished wreaking destruction. 

Fingers are digging into her cheekbones, sharp, and she whimpers before she recognizes that they’re only April’s hands. Something safe and good and not an imminent threat. The touch, the warmth it begins to pour into her veins, helps her start to breathe deeply again. Her lungs still only feel like they’re at half capacity, but she’s starting to breathe and it’s better than just a moment ago, at the very least. She’s able to take a deep breath and start to relax, loosen the tension in her muscles until she’s finally able to fill her chest with precious oxygen and set the tablet on her lap. She doesn’t lean forward to pick up her notebook yet, far too content in the way April’s holding her face like she’s something precious.

“You’re okay,” April says, and Sarah finds herself nodding. “Just keep breathing. Do you wanna talk about what happened?”

She should, but for now, Sarah shakes her head. As soon as April releases her face, Sarah picks up her notebook and returns the tablet. She’s got enough information for now- the baby isn’t Sarah’s, and everyone in this hospital is in grave danger. Her top priority for everyone’s safety is now Connor. Which means she’s got to talk to him, and absolutely Will.

“I think you should take some time off,” Sarah says as they walk out of the bathroom together. “At least until I figure this all out.”

“Sarah, I can’t just- figure what out?”

No matter how she phrases it, she’ll sound crazy. There’s no way around it, especially when talking to those who don’t live in the same world she does. “The thing that killed Connor poses an active danger to everyone in this hospital, including you. Until I can get rid of it, no one should be in the building.”

“Okay, I think you’re overexaggerating.”

April’s voice is clearly dramatized, but she bumps her shoulder against Sarah’s in a way that promises no irritation, no hard feelings if she is. But the thing is, she’s not, and it’s probably going to be difficult to do anything to cleanse the meticulous, strictly controlled hospital environment, but she has to try.  If she did nothing, she’d never forgive herself. Already, she’s trying to figure out what to ask Will, and when. She’d have to isolate him from Connor, but Connor’s reaction could be unpredictable, violent even, and that’s a risk she isn’t sure if she’s willing to take.

She has no choice, though, and  that weighs on her when they get back to the ED and Connor is standing behind Will, a hand reached out as if to touch the stubbly skin of his cheek. It has to hurt, having no way to touch the people around you. She can only begin to imagine the amount of pain he must be in right now.

He comes up to her, this time, and leans against the counter although the edge of his hip sinks through the countertop, a reminder of what he isn’t. There’s so much blood on his spirit. She has the urge to lift her arm and wipe it away, but it just isn’t possible.

“I read your autopsy report,” she tells him.

Connor tilts his head to the side, and people around them begin to move faster. It tightens Sarah’s chest but she refuses to acknowledge it. She can’t and shouldn’t show any reaction to the way he plays with the reality around them.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Connor says softly, his gaze flickering over to Will. “Did the report say how long it took them to find me?”

“Four hours. After the hostage situation ended.”

He nods, and she almost forgets how much power lurks beneath his skin. “I just didn’t want them to focus on me instead of the patients. I thought I would be okay. And then they didn’t even look for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs and sniffles, evidence he’d be crying if he was capable. Sarah’s given the chance to wonder if maybe, she can free him just like this and turn all of her focus to getting rid of the thing that killed him. But as she’s thinking about it, something dark drifts across Connor’s face and he steps back, the clocks slowing now, so everyone around her is stopped in time. He shouldn’t be able to do this.

“I don’t want you to send me away, or to the next plane, or some shit. I need to be here for Will.”

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (4/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes

15 January 2019 | 09:00 Local Time

I worked out early this morning for certain that April is not being haunted by her own child. I haven’t told her yet, but she has allowed me to look at hospital records to see if I can identify the baby and its mother who have begun to destroy her life. As far as I know, they could still have some connection that’s important to being able to free them.

Connor is hanging around still, and seems to be wary of me. I know he sees me, but he hasn’t approached me again and sticks much closer to Dr. Halstead than in the past. Should he become violent, I believe it would be Dr. Halstead5 who is most at risk. Before the end of the day, I should talk to him and try and help him, find out if he’s experienced anything that could be described as the haunting he’s experiencing. Some people just don’t notice. If he knows what he’s dealing with, he'll be safer.

-

When Sarah wakes up, she feels calmer and safer than she has since she was a small child. There’s all this hair in her face, smelling like fruit and sweetness, and when she opens her eyes she can prove to herself that it’s April who’s pressed against her, whose legs are tangled with hers, who has a warm stomach pressing against Sarah’s hand because her pajama shirt rode up sometime in the night. This is the sort of thing she’s been craving her entire life. Intimacy. Happiness. 

But she suddenly gets this itch under her skin, this doubt, this fear that she’s overstepped. There’s no way to know if April is into women, let alone Sarah. She doesn’t want to be someone who’s made assumptions, who’s taken advantage of the fact that they slept in the same bed. As carefully and quietly as she can, Sarah detangles herself from April and slips out of bed. Hopefully April won’t mind if she showers and puts on clean clothes, maybe makes them breakfast- she did say the kitchen was open, and Sarah brought her own soap and such. Five minutes to wake up and get clean, then she can make something for the two of them to share.

She showers as quickly as she can, especially once the crying starts up again, which will undoubtedly wake April. Her hair takes forever to dry, but she doesn’t wanna bother with it and twists it into a bun in hopes of drying it with the hand dryers at the hospital. April has a blowdryer on her counter, but Sarah would feel weird using it. So she doesn’t, and towels off quickly, too much so in fact, because there’s still water dripping down the back of her neck when she pulls on her t-shirt. She sticks her tongue out at her reflection in the foggy mirror.

Once she emerges from the bathroom, she can hear April starting to shift in the creaky bed, but it plays second to the quiet but still audible crying, and now the mother’s tired shushing. She isn’t sure why it took so long for the mother to make herself known, but what matters is freeing April from the spirits haunting her. It’s the one thing Sarah can do to help people, and she’ll do it. Even if, some day, it kills her. 

The kitchen is poorly stocked. Most of it is dry goods, nothing that expires. No fruit, no milk or yogurt. It’s a little gut wrenching, but Sarah knows the feeling. No sleep, filled with anxiety and paranoia, terrified of the spirits with no idea how to control them. So she doesn’t make anything for breakfast, and sets to cleaning up the things left behind last night when April saw things humans aren’t meant to see. The ash is closed, but appears to have spilled anyways, and there’s wax sprayed around the candles. She picks them up carefully, packs them away tenderly, and gives herself a moment to think over the remains in an effort to cleanse them from the energy that bathed them in anger the night before. Her eyes land on her grandmother’s crucifix. Just like before, she knows it has no real power of its own, but it’s the thought that counts. Sarah curls her hand around the smooth wood and pulls it out, imagining the way her grandmother always felt so safe with this to protect her. It’s the energy attached. The warmth. 

“Morning,”  April says, and her voice is like pure sugar spun into the most delicate gossamer, and Sarah wants to suffocate in it. “Sorry I don’t have much-”

“It’s okay.”

Sarah still has the cross in her hand when April kneels beside her, and she smells like sleep and linen, and the point where their knees touch is electric.

“You’re Christian?”

She shakes her head and rubs her thumb against the cold torso of what had been Christ before years of worrying the wood has worn it mostly smooth. “I don’t believe in anything, but my grandmother did. What matters is that she believed in it, she loved it, and she put faith in it. The love, that’s what matters. It’s the thing that really protects us. So people with faith, I understand, I guess. Believing in things helps.”

“I’m Catholic, and believing used to help. It hasn’t much, lately.”

Sarah presses the cross into April’s hand, allows the pads of her fingers to skim the golden skin of her palm. “Maybe this will help. It makes me feel safer than anything else in the world.”

April smiles, pulls the crucifix in tight to her body like one would hold a baby. She cradles it, holds it against her chest and for the briefest of seconds, she imagines April holding the child which has been haunting her, and she knows- she has to ask. But she can’t yet, not in such a fragile moment like this one, after what they went through together last night. Instead, she decides she can and should do her own research at the hospital. Look into records, try and talk to anyone she can about Connor, and come up with a solid plan to set April free from the spirits.

When April stands up, still holding the cross, Sarah suddenly feels somewhat cold, like she’s missing something even though the only shift has been a change in the presence next to her. She hasn’t seen the spirits again, but she can still faintly hear them, although it’s quieter now. Less invasive. She can’t resist feeling lighter, even as it fights an indescribable heaviness borne of the sudden distance between herself and April.

“Is there any way you can let me look at hospital records?” she asks, instead of evaluating why she feels the way she does all of a sudden. “Any infant deaths, any deaths during or after labor, anything like that. And, if possible-” Sarah has to collect herself first, “-anything in the system about Connor, specifically about his death.”

The bubble of warmth they built bursts immediately, collapsing in shards around Sarah so quickly she can practically feel them cutting into her skin, energy so intense it becomes borderline tangible.

“Why are you still asking about Connor?”

Why is she still asking about Connor? It’s not a bad question, in all honesty. He seems to not be causing any trouble, at least not yet. The best answer she can give is a shrug, and in a light voice that doesn’t entirely come from her own lungs, she says, “Something just doesn’t feel right.”

“Nothing does at Med, not since way before he died. He has nothing to do with it.”

Maybe it’s not his fault, but he’s part of it, and probably the same thing is what’s causing April to be haunted. Hospitals, they’re breeding grounds for spirits. They get infested. And something at Gaffney isn’t right, something needs to be fixed and taken care of before something worse happens. And it looks like Connor might be a good place to start, if his death was “suspicious” but there was no detail, no explanation, and no one wants to talk about him, least of all Connor himself.

“It could be connected to your baby, April.”

She presses her lips together and looks down, but she’s still holding the crucifix in her hand, albeit a little tightly. The wood must be digging into her skin. But she’s thinking about giving Sarah access to the records, and those could very well be the key to understanding this whole thing. She can help people. She can help April.

“I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.” Before Sarah can thank her, April sighs, and says, “I think you should talk to Will.”

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (2/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes

14 January 2019 | 19:58 Local Time

I have formally met the man haunting Dr. Halstead, or as the spirit calls him, Will and/or Sunshine. He will not tell me his name or how he died, although I looked into the hospital records and have identified him as Dr. Connor Rhodes, former Cardiothoracic/Trauma surgeon. His cause of death was labeled inconclusive, and Connor will not give me any details. I believe he died at the hospital, and it’s worth a legal investigation why he was labeled inconclusive when his death was clearly violent.

Connor is violent verbally, although his actions do not follow through3. I believe he is frightened, and that’s why he can’t move on. However, he has an undue influence on the environment around him. Particularly, the sense of time. It makes me nervous to think about the danger he could put Dr. Halstead in by doing this, as it doesn’t seem to be intentional- although he is aware of it and can bring his influence to a stop. Without more information about his life and death, I can’t help him or the doctor he has chosen to haunt.

3[Addendum ?? January 2019 | ??:?? Local Time]

Connor has proven that he is capable, physically and emotionally, of violence when he so chooses. I’ve never failed to detect this before, so I think he may have developed this capability recently. My best guess at this time would be that the communication I held for him to speak with Will is responsible. He is capable of violence. I believe the hospital should be evacuated and temporarily shut down until Connor can be contained.

-

While April gets back to work, leading Sarah away from the overwhelming crying, she finds herself a seat in the corner of the waiting room and observes. Most of the people lingering, the spirits, are benevolent, if not completely detached from the world. They just drift aimlessly, stare at themselves. Sarah wishes more than anything she could help them all, but she just doesn’t have the time. She promised herself a long time ago that she would give priority to those who really need her- people tortured, and spirits in pain. 

As she sits, she gets to see Will- whose scrubs are labeled “Halstead” if she squints- come out to the front desk to say something to the nurse there. Behind him lingers the same ghost, still bloodstained and trying to touch Will, but unable. He isn’t capable right now.

“Hey,” she hisses, and the spirit spins to look at her. Points at himself. “Yes.”

One of the other people in the waiting room, a mom cradling a wheezing toddler, shoots her a strange look and moves away a seat. That doesn’t matter, though, because the spirit drifts toward her and looks down at her, like he’s sizing her up and trying to decide what he makes of her. She’s not blatantly hurt or sick, and she knows she looks strange to him, since he wasn’t expecting a medium to show up and try to speak with him.

“My name’s Sarah,” she says.

“Connor. You can see me.”

She nods. A lot of spirits are surprised. When they can impact the physical world, even then, many aren’t visible to most human eyes. “I have the gift.”

Connor shifts nervously, looks around the room. He must be able to see the others like him, but has gotten used to the way they’re walked through and ignored by others. It can be terrifying to scream and have no one really hear you. She can’t imagine that, can’t come close to thinking up how that must feel. 

“Connor, do you have any idea why you’re stuck here? Because I can help you move on, if you’d like.”

He recoils like she’s burned him, looks back to Will and wipes his face. His hands scrub roughly, but the bloodstains don’t move. She wonders if the blood is his own, because she can’t entirely see where it’s coming from. Maybe if she saw his autopsy, she’d have more luck. But now, he’s looking at her like she’s threatened to kill him all over again, and she knows she can’t push him any farther today.

“Never, ever speak to me again.”

Just like that, he’s gone, and Sarah can’t reach for her phone fast enough. She knows which websites to look at to try and figure out what happened to him, what kind of person he was, but when she presses the power button, white numbers flash at her almost violently. It’s seven at night. When she sat down, it had barely been four. He must have some ability to manipulate time, or at least her perception of it, and that in of itself is a clue about what might have happened to him. She needs to talk to Will, though, is the thing. He might have the answers she needs.

First, though, she gets as much off the internet as she can. Suspicious death. Passed away six months ago. He was a gifted surgeon, born with a silver spoon in his mouth but determined to change the perception that he didn’t work hard. His mother killed herself when he was young. His sister and father are still alive. His instagram is private, and the bio simply reads an obituary written by someone who had loved him before his life came to an end.

Sarah winds up with more questions than answers. She needs to talk to Will, get more information from him, but it doesn’t seem like a possibility. At the moment, she doesn’t consider Connor dangerous, but he could quickly turn if she upset him by doing something like asking Will about his death.

When April finally gets off work and comes to get her, Sarah wonders if she was close enough to Connor to be someone who Connor wouldn’t like to be questioned. It’s worth asking, at the very least. The worst that happens is April doesn’t know anything, or doesn’t want to talk about it, which Sarah really wouldn’t be able to blame her for. She was called to help let April’s baby cross to the other side, not to investigate Connor. And at the moment, he isn’t a threat, so it isn’t the worst thing in the world if she has to let it go. 

“Did you know Connor Rhodes?”

The name makes April pause, her shoulders falling into a strict, angry line. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked right now. “Yeah. We weren’t super close or anything, but we were friends. Why?”

“He’s around. Did he die here?”

“I don’t want to talk about him, Sarah.”

“Right. Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, I just- yeah. “I’ll get in my car and follow you? I’ve got stuff I need in there.” She thinks about the whole altar she has in her trunk, in addition to the duffel she’s got in her back seat. Without them, she can’t really measure the severity of the haunting, nor can she help. “Hopefully I can uh, solve this for you tonight or tomorrow. It doesn’t seem to be a difficult one.”

April seems relieved, her tension melting a little. “Thank you. Really. I can’t wait for this to be over.”

Sarah knows the feeling, but for a moment, she imagines what it might be like to stay longer. Something about April just draws her in, makes her feel like nothing else in the world matters. It’s like light, like sunshine, has been personified and Sarah has been blessed with the opportunity to meet her.

“Of course.”

She opens the car door for April, closes it after her, and heads to her car at a not-quite-jog, not wanting to waste time. She doesn’t have much to spend here, and she wants to spend what she has with April in an effort to understand the radiance pouring out of her. Maybe, if she’s lucky, she can spend a little longer here to investigate Connor. Not that it’s lucky for a disgruntled ghost to be trapped on this plane, but she just doesn’t want to leave. Something makes her want to stay here, stay in Chicago, stay with April. It feels right.

By the time she backs out, she has to speed through the lot a little to catch up with April. But after that, it’s easy going, not worrying about the unfamiliar twists of the road when she has a practical angel guiding her way. As long as she stays behind the sensible grey honda, she’s alright. And thankfully, she’s able without a hitch, and eventually they reach a nice apartment complex, nicer than Sarah’s home base she just uses as somewhere to rest between jobs and store her things. It’s not really a home. It’s just a cheap house in the middle of texas, smack in the middle of a far spread of houses surrounded by chickens and horses. The area gives a sense of family, just not one Sarah is a part of.

April parks in a numbered spot and slides out of her car, all grace and beauty, before coming up to lean on Sarah’s car door and, in a moment, let her arms balance on the sill of the now unrolled window. 

“My neighbor is on vacation for the next week, so you can use his spot,” she says, gesturing to a space a couple parking spots down from her own car. 

Then she’s backing away, and Sarah pulls in smoothly, thankful that she doesn’t need to repark. It would be humiliating. But she does fine, and is able to get out of her car and grab the duffel bag from the trunk. Candles, some gemstones and other instruments of connection to the world that many don’t see, a good handful of her notebooks to call back on if need be, and the same cross her grandmother had used some fifty years ago. It doesn’t work the way movies would have one believe, but the sense of safety and familiarity it gives Sarah is enough for it to be a useful part of her kit, both for her job and for the remaining frays of her sanity. Some days she wonders, how far is she from completely losing her mind? The answer varies. 

She hefts the bag on her shoulder so she can follow April in, making a point to keep her eyes respectfully on the bun at the nape of April’s neck. It’s still neat and almost entirely intact in spite of how long ago it must have been done. Nurse’s shifts can be killers. They’re often far too long, to the point that any other industry would be filled with strikes and complaints of inhumane demands. But that’s the medical field, that’s the kind of people who dedicate themselves to saving others. 

As April pulls out her key to let them through an almost unsettlingly average apartment door, Sarah watches her fingers sort through the metal and tries to ignore the faint crying that starts for the first time since she left the hospital.

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (6/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes.

15 January 2019 | 15:00 Local Time

The worst part of all of this is that no one really believes me. They consider me to be overreacting, if not crazy, and I can’t afford to be put on a psych hold. However, I’m beginning to understand Connor, and he’s the key to this whole thing. There are no other deaths like his. He’s the epicenter of the infestation, the host, and if I can just get him to move on, everything will be alright.

I worry, however, that I may not be able to. He told me today that he doesn’t want to move on, and I saw him physically interact with someone for the first time. I’m concerned that I may have to resort to drastic actions, but I refuse to go that far without doing everything I can first. I don’t want to hurt anyone, least of all those in this much pain.

My biggest concern is for April. She’s in a lot of danger but she insists it’s just an annoyance. At any given moment, the spirits could snap and seriously hurt her, and she could wind up like Connor is now.

-

After Connor decides he’s done talking to her, Sarah makes a run back to her car and then waits for the opportunity to talk to Will. She needs to if she has any hope of saving this hospital. All day, he’s busy- he’s a doctor, after all, but as evening approaches, he goes on his break, and she rushes to grab onto his arm even though Connor is clearly unhappy and a strange pulling sensation begins in Sarah’s chest. She needs to separate him quickly, before blood begins to drip from her mouth and her lungs collapse in her rib cage. Even if Connor doesn’t mean to, he could kill her.

“I’m a friend of April’s,” she says quickly, “and we need to go into a room where we can shut the door. Quickly.”

He seems startled, and he’s tensed like a bird preparing for flight, but he nods and leads her to a door labeled “consult room,” one hand braced next to his hip awkwardly. Sarah recognizes the gesture from the times she’s spent in places like Texas, Kentucky, and Florida- reaching for a gun. Logically, she should put her hands up, but there isn’t time when she has to lay a sigil in front of the door frame to keep Connor out. Sage, salt and citrine, arranged carefully, and hopefully strong enough to keep Connor out long enough for Sarah to have a conversation with Will uninterrupted.

Once that’s done and she turns back to him, his hand is fully on his hip, at a bulge that seems more obvious now. He’s afraid of her, and that makes Sarah actually feel sorry for him, because she’s by no means an intimidating person. 

“I just wanna talk to you,” she says, adjusting her coat self-consciously. “It’s about Connor Rhodes.”

The color drains from his face, but at least his hands fall limp to his sides, no longer a moment away from a deadly weapon. She sees in the immediate difference that he’s close to a breaking point. If she wasn’t here, she wonders if Connor would kill him at some point, on purpose or otherwise. Will needs a break. 

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

He snorts. “Uh, not exactly, Miss…”

“Call me Sarah.” She glances to the door and she can sense that Connor is waiting. She can feel it in the pressure around her chest as a result of the angry beast that’s destroyed him. “But since Connor died, tell me, Dr. Halstead, do you experience anything weird? Maybe time moves differently, or things are getting misplaced, or you keep hearing his voice…?” Sarah trails off because his eyes go hard and she knows she’s hit something.

“I think I hear him every now and then, and sometimes it feels like things go really fast. I mean, grief is like that, it was with my mom. But sometimes, I wake up, and-” Will raises his hands and makes a harsh gesture. “There’s hot coffee on the counter, or the blinds will be open, or my scrubs will be laid out for me.”

The door rattles and they both look at it. The sigil won’t hold very much longer before Connor can reach them, and he’ll be angry.

“Okay, that’s Connor,” she says. She’s talking too fast. “He was killed by something very evil in this hospital, and his spirit is still here. He’s been following you. And he’s extremely dangerous. I need you to tell me everything you can about the day he died, and anything that might give him a reason to stay here. Once I fix that, he might be able to move on, and I know you want that for him, right? You were his emergency contact. You had to have loved-”

Before she finishes the sentence, the door slams open and it’s Connor, visible to Will as well judging by his gasp. Connor’s right in front of her just like that, and she can’t breathe all over again, but it’s different from her earlier panic attack. This time, her lungs are physically being crushed, and when she glances down, she sees Connor wrist deep in her chest. 

Her vision is going dark around the edges and she can’t even gasp for breath now. Will needs to help her. She wishes she could say something, try and convince him, but again- she can’t breathe. On the verge of passing out, however, she hears him sigh out Connor’s name.

“You can see me?”

Connor lets go of her and she stumbles to the side, coughing desperately and winding up with her face inches from the rough carpet. She can hear, though, Will’s stuttering and sobs, and Connor just saying over and over that he loves him. It only lasts for a moment, though, because then Will kneels beside her and rubs her back.

“Sarah, hey, are you okay? What happened?”

She can’t voice it, ask Will how he didn’t notice what Connor did, so she just keeps trying to breathe even though it feels like she’s drowning. Although she wants to think she’s capable of dealing with these sorts of things, she just can’t catch her breath, and the next thing she knows, she’s in a hospital bed with a mask on her face and a crowd of doctors around her. There are so many machines around her, and it’s loud, but through it all, she can see Connor standing just beyond all the faces, watching her. Something warm and wet rolls down her cheek, but then a hand brushes it away, and when she follows it, her eyes land on April. The light shines down, scattering through the stray hair that’s fallen in front of her face. Sarah reaches for her, or at least she thinks he does.

“Just relax,” April says, and she’s putting something into the IV that Sarah doesn’t remember getting. Suddenly a woman with kind brown eyes is pulling up her shirt, and there’s a sharp, not-quite painful sensation in her ribs. She struggles to look down, and suddenly there’s a tube being pushed through her skin, and it’s weird. But she starts to be able to breathe better, and she lets her eyes drift back to April, who lingers at her bedside with her lips drawn down at the corners. “You’re gonna be okay, Sarah. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Connor,” she chokes out.

Everyone pauses for a moment, but then they get back to work. Connor is laughing at her, and the baby is crying, and the mother is screaming, and it feels like all the ghosts are closing in around her because she can’t protect herself right now. Sarah has to squeeze her eyes shut and think about a bubble around her, safety to keep the spirits out, but it doesn’t work when she can still barely breathe and her chest hurts so much.

“We’re gonna take care of you, don’t worry,” April soothes, and that’s the last thing Sarah registers before she’s completely gone.

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward Masterlist

(Archive of Our Own)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (13/13)

All night, Sarah sits on the floor beside April and watches her read through pages and pages of handwriting. Diligent notes on every case she’s ever taken, accounts of how she handled things. Pages of incantations and spells. And of course, a whole separate book on the conduits and connectives Sarah uses for her craft, which she helps April identify out of her duffel bag. It’s not a quick process, certainly not an easy education, but April is a patient student who asks questions and listens carefully to the answers before typing them onto a Google doc on her phone. She prefers them like that, she says. Easy to access. Quick to write. It’s different, but to each their own, and it does really seem to be more convenient. 

By the time the sun peeks through the window, casting golden warmth across April’s beautiful face, it’s past the start of a shift which no longer exists, and the bags under kind eyes look so much heavier. She needs rest, but in all reality, Sarah can’t blame her for not wanting it. What they saw in the pathology lab, what they went through- if she was still alive, she’s certain it would be giving her nightmares, and she’s worked hard to stop having those via blessings and journaling and a couple drop-in therapy sessions on the rare occasion she’s home.

“You should try for a nap,” she says. “You need the rest.”

April tilts her head from side to side, slow and stalling until she’s come to a decision. “Only if you come with me. I know I won’t be able to- but I don’t want to be alone.”

“Anything you want.”

She gets to her feet and trails April to the bedroom, watches her strip down before crawling into the sheets and pulling the blankets tightly around herself in a protective shield. Sometimes, feeling small is safe. Not all the time, but when it counts. Sarah’s done the same thing too many times to recall. Once April starts to settle, Sarah joins her and focuses on making herself just solid enough to make a comforting weight draped over the divot of April’s hip. It’s exactly the sort of thing she wishes she had gotten to do more in her life, especially with someone like this. Especially with April. Sarah wants to kiss her again, but as it is, she’s losing her grip on the tangibility she uses to hold her.

Just barely, she holds on until April’s breathing evens out and she seems to be asleep. Although she could easily wander off now, Sarah finds herself staying and just admiring the little things like the slope of April’s back and the shadows her eyelashes cast down onto her cheeks and the fan of her curls in a halo cupping her skull. She’s beautiful, but it’s deeper than just the way she looks lying here on the right side of the bed. It’s her smile, and the sound of her voice, and how she understands the importance of helping people who don’t know how to help themselves. She’s a nurse, after all.

Sarah wishes she got more of a chance to touch her, and wonders if Connor ever thought that way about Will. She knows he loved him, and it was obvious that Will loved him too. Two people destroyed by something which shouldn’t have even dared to set foot here in the first place. It’s gone, but it’ll come back. Things like that always come back. Sarah wishes she could say the same for herself. Once she moves on, she’s gone for good. And as far as most people are concerned, she already is. Again, it strikes her that April is the only person who will miss her, and they’ve known each other for such a short time. What a testament to the isolation Sarah has imposed upon herself by choosing to try and put good into the world. So many awful people have those who would miss them, and she’s alone, and it’s not fair.

Nothing has ever been, though, and she reminds herself that if she’s trapped, at least it’s with April, who can not only hear her, but wants her around. She understands her. It’s a good feeling, she decides.

Something brown catches her eye on April’s metal nightstand, and it chills her when she realizes what it is. Her grandmother’s cross, which they had resolutely left on the kitchen counter to watch over them while they studied through the stars shifting overhead. Neither of them brought it.

Dark whispers tap at her eardrums, not loud, but angry. A promise to come back because certain things aren’t destroyed, only temporarily removed. She thinks an incantation that she won’t voice out of fear of waking April up. For now, it works, but she’s certain it’ll be following them- following April- for a long time, maybe the rest of her life. That’s the life she chose for herself. Hating it, just a little, Sarah draws on April’s already very depleted energy to hold her again, touch her and bury her face in her hair. It’s so safe. Or at least, it feels safe although it’s not. Maybe, just maybe, she deserves to feel that way after all she’s been through, including managing to die because she wasn’t careful enough.

Through the crack in the curtains, the sunlight has turned more white than gold, but still offers beautiful streams across the room and reminds her that the light does come back. Slowly. So slowly. Too slowly. But it comes back, and sometimes when it comes back, it takes the form of a nurse in the middle of Chicago being haunted by a baby that isn’t even hers. 

They should visit Will and make sure he’s alright once April wakes up. He deserves support, needs it, and he doesn’t have anyone the way Sarah and April have each other now. Perhaps, before they leave, they’ll convince him to talk to someone. Maybe not. 

It would be good, though, and Sarah desperately wants to do something good without it backfiring and costing more lives before she could temporarily banish a killer. A killer who haunts her right back, and who plasters the inside of her eyelids with Connor’s agonized face as he burned away right along with the infested heart.

If and when she moves on, it’ll probably hurt.

Instead of thinking about that, Sarah keeps tugging on April’s energy so she can pepper kisses over warm shoulders and try to memorize the feeling against her lips. She doesn’t know when she’ll be able to do this again, if she’ll be able to; and yet she can’t imagine never getting to feel this way again. Like she means something to herself for the first time. It’s good.

Although she can’t and doesn’t sleep, Sarah falls into a sort of trance while April rests. Laying with her, occasionally making herself tangible to hold her or kiss her. When mid afternoon rolls around and April sits up with a yawn, unafraid of the way the covers pool at her hips and show everything, Sarah allows herself to imagine what they could have been, given more time. What they could have done.

“Sarah?”

She forces herself solid just enough to hold April’s cheek for a split second. Without speaking, she offers the reassurance they both need so desperately at a time like this. But before she knows it, her palm slips and she’s no longer able to make contact. April does the sweetest thing then, placing her own hand there in lieu and smiling at the empty space only an inch or so too high. It feels like tenderness. It feels like home. Sarah mirrors the action on herself and although it isn’t entirely the same, she knows what it means, and that’s the important part. 

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” April says, an interruption to the moment that had just begun to pull at their hearts. “That this killed you, and now you’re trapped.”

“Can’t think of anyone I’d rather be trapped with.”

Maybe that’s the point, Sarah decides suddenly. She’s trapped to get all the things she couldn’t have while she was alive, alone, trapped in a different way by loneliness that only fades now, unable to connect with the real world but finally connected with a person. Someone who doesn’t think she’s crazy. Someone who asks every so often if she’s still there, just to make sure. 

Another dark wave, another slew of voices attack her, and Sarah forces herself not to say a word about it yet. 

“Let’s cleanse your apartment,” she says, snapping the seconds between them like brittle bones.

She dreads the day they have to deal with this again, but she also knows she won’t be alone, and she has a purpose in death that she never would have found otherwise. Perhaps death is the best thing that could have happened. As April goes to get the supplies, Sarah stretches out on the bed and allows herself to dream of the time they’ll get to have together.

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (12/13)

The deeper they dig, the more frequently and louder Connor screams. At first, it seems Sarah is the only one who hears him, but around four feet into digging, Will starts wincing too, and April gets it at five. There aren’t words, just the most heart-wrenching, broken, blood-curdling scream like he’s dying all over again, and doesn’t want to be alone this time. He didn’t deserve to die alone, but that’s the way it seems things turned out for him.

The dirt feels strange on Sarah’s hands when she can’t entirely feel it. There’s no neurons to her skin anymore. She hates everything about this feeling and yet, it persists. She can’t do anything to get rid of it, and she can’t even try to move on until she’s sure that the threat has been eliminated and nothing bad will happen to April. At least, nothing more than what’s already happened.

“April, get the incantation ready,” she says, shouting a little to be heard over Connor’s screaming. 

April immediately stops digging and fumbles for Sarah’s notebook. They can’t make the hole exactly six feet, not without a measuring tape, but it seems good enough because it’s about as deep as Will is tall.

“Open the bag and drop the heart into the hole.”

Will obeys without hesitation, but the moment the heart is out in the open air again, the darkness around them feels deeper, and it’s all Sarah can do not to scream like Connor is. The urge bubbles up in her chest, pushes at her insistently, prods her like the needles from her IV what feels like a million years ago. It burns, almost. And when the heart hits the dirt at the bottom, it feels like she’d vomit if she could. The nausea rolls over her, won’t leave her alone.

As April begins speaking in a tongue unfamiliar to her mouth, trying not to stumble over the latin Sarah knows all too well from years of practice, the first sparks of flame begin to eat away at the heart. At the same time, they bite into Connor and he burns too, still screaming and now begging desperately for help, so loudly that it has Will covering his ears and crying all over again.

A burning sensation, twin to everything else, settles itself in every inch of Sarah’s being, but when she looks at herself, she isn’t being destroyed like the rest of it. Maybe it didn’t get to her, and wouldn’t that be a thought. The blessing April tried to use to release her, worked, but only partially. Not enough. She’s here still, but at least she’s not caught in the way Connor is.

“It’s going to be okay,” she tells him, even as he’s vanishing and the sound of his screams warps painfully. “Everything will be alright, Connor. You’ll be happier now.”

“Tell him I’m sorry,” Connor cries, and she nods. 

He fades, and when Sarah looks down to the heart, it’s almost completely gone.

“Bury it again,” Sarah says, and while April and Will get back to it, she takes Connor’s almost gone hand. Holds it. Strokes her thumb along his knuckles. This time, he’s not alone. He smiles at her, a little sadly, and just like that, he’s gone. 

Then she starts at helping them in the dirt all over again. Burying it doesn’t erase it, but it does help make sure the pain stops, and protects people in the future. Sarah had hoped this would free her as well, but she’s still, wishing she could kiss April again. They only did it a couple of times, but it felt like coming home, and now, now all of that is gone. She can’t ever feel that again. And she’s still trapped here, but with no idea why or how to escape. Connor may have suffered, but he’s not still stuck here, still in pain. He’s free. 

“Sarah, you’re still here?” April asks tentatively, watching more dirt fall into the hole than herself and Will are managing on their own. 

“I’m still here.”

When they approach the top of the hole again, Will mutters something about walking home, and leaves the two of them alone to sort this out themselves. Sarah smooths the dirt, and wishes they could put back the grass. Someone may dig this up again in a few days out of curiosity, but by then, the threat should have completely passed. 

Then April gets back into her car with her shoulders sagging down, the weight of everything they’ve been through in the last few days sinking on her, into her, deeper than it should for any human being as they weave through the chaos brought on by the hospital literally collapsing.Thankfully, April’s apartment isn’t too far of a drive and they’re only trapped in the car for twenty minutes before the keys are yanked out of the ignition and April trudges up to her home. Sarah remembers it being homey, if a little disrupted by the haunting.

The first thing she notices is that the spirits are gone now. No longer here. They must’ve gone when the heart was buried, just like Connor. It seems they truly were a part of it, not just tied into everything. But the thing that really hurts is that Sarah’s grandmother’s cross is sitting reverently on the kitchen counter. A ward, but one which doesn’t push her away because it’s a part of her, she thinks, something which ties her to the Earth. Maybe burning it will free her, but she can’t imagine destroying something so tied to her family, to her life, to everything she stands for as a person even though she isn’t a believer like April is. 

As though she’s forgotten Sarah is still here, April all but falls onto her couch and buries her face in gritty, dirt and blood covered hands. She needs a shower. But that’s likely the last thing on her mind with the trauma she’s been through, the minute shakes of her shoulders. Too slowly, Sarah realizes she’s crying. And all she wants to do is sit beside her, wipe her tears and kiss her jaw and promise her that everything can be fixed. If only things were that simple.

Sarah feels strange, just standing here and watching this. Like she’s intruding on a private moment, seeing something not meant for anyone’s eyes. Oddly enough, she feels this is as intimate as watching someone shower. So she turns away and busies herself admiring the crucifix. Now that she’s gone- and so is the threat- she wonders if April will keep it. Probably not. There’s no point, and it only serves as a reminder of the kind of pain with which she was inflicted. No one likes reminders like that. They just hurt too much.

She can’t think of anywhere else to go. She doesn’t think she can leave Chicago, as whatever is binding her is probably here, but April is the only person she really knows. Will is more of an acquaintance, and he clearly needs space right now.

Out of nowhere, she hears it, then. 

“Sarah?”

“I’m still here.” 

She hears April moving around behind her, probably trying to see her, find her. She isn’t visible, though. Connor didn’t teach her that, and she has yet to figure it out herself. “What happens next? Med is destroyed, and so’s Connor, and you- you’re still here.”

“I don’t know.”

And she doesn’t. When it comes to these things, she usually has the answers. It’s her job to have the answers. This time, the time that it actually matters, she doesn’t, and she hates herself for it so much that she actually feels the pain in her gut. Any words she might come up with would offer no comfort. Perhaps it’s time she stops trying to help. 

“Who does your work? You said it yourself, how many people need your help.”

“I don’t know.”

“And if you’re still here, that means you’re trapped, so how- how can I fix that?”

“I don’t know.”

Every time Sarah admits it, she feels even smaller. Even worse. And when she looks to April again, finally, she sees her standing in the middle of the room with her palms up and her eyes shut, the way she must have seen Sarah do when she was trying to contact the spirits on that first fateful night. She’s adorable and naive and too good for everything that’s happened.

“What if I did it? I’m a fast learner, and I’ve got all your notes. I can learn, make a difference-”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Sarah interrupts. She only did this because there was nothing else she could. No one deserves the loneliness, the uncertainty.

April’s eyes open, almost glowing gold, and she says softly, “Then don’t ask. I want to.”

Not for the first time, Sarah thinks she’s otherworldly, but now, there’s a truth to it. She looks more than human. And if there were words to describe the way she feels right now, they’d pour out of her like a waterfall. Unfortunately, there are no such luxuries, and she’s speechless. 

“And since you’re still here, until I can free you, you can help me. We can help people. Doesn’t that sound like a good thing?”

It does. Sarah wants it. And maybe, just maybe, she can have it.

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Afterward (3/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes

15 January 2019 | 00:30 Local Time

April’s home is filled with marks of a woman who is losing to the spirits. The dishes, though clean, sit on the counter. There’s broken glass on the kitchen floor. The couch looks like it’s been clawed to pieces. None of this, however, is as damning as the clear exhaustion in her eyes the moment she feels safe.

I wanted to ask her more questions, but I don’t think she’s up to it. She’s exhausted, and the moment I began to lay my tools out on the soft carpet floor, she nodded, and left. It was more to herself than me. The shower ran for five minutes, during which the crying spirit hit its crescendo, but now, I believe April is asleep. 

My own observations are making me concerned. The baby has latched onto April, and it cries tirelessly, but I can tell the connection isn’t entirely correct. It has no love. Were this truly the child April lost, there would be some kind of bond, something maternal and warm, that drew the spirit to her. That is not the case here. The spirit, and this apartment, feel cold. The thermostat claims it is sixty five fahrenheit in here, but it feels like fifty. More importantly, I don’t believe the baby to be April’s, given the other apparition haunting her.

-

“If you need or want to sleep, you can take the couch,” April says, fluffing a throw pillow and either ignoring or failing to notice the stuffing leaking out of gouges in the once crisp navy fabric. It’s an expensive couch, or at least it had been at some point in the past. Not any more. “The cabinets in the hallway have spare sheets and blankets. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”

Sarah should thank her, mention something about her being a good host, but she doesn’t get the chance before April’s eyes land on the open duffel bag between them and she turns to leave. She takes her hair from its bun as she goes, allowing bouncy, beautiful curls to expand around her shoulders. Sarah has curly hair too, but not as tightly wound, nor as beautiful and so fitting to the energy reaching out, making Sarah feel like she has no choice but to follow. They seem a halo almost.

Soon, the shower thunders an echo in the apartment, accompanied by more crying so loud it hurts Sarah’s ears as she unloads her bag for what she needs. Candles, not yet lit but soon to be, her pendulum, her selenite conduit, and a vial- mason jar, really- of volcanic ash she made the trip to Hawaii specifically to collect and properly bless. Ordering online, even if it was authentic, is inviting the possibility that someone did it wrong and the ash won’t do what it’s supposed to. She loves touching it, loves feeling it, but can’t afford to waste the valuable material when she doubts she’ll be able to afford to go back any time soon.

She pulls out a matchbook and lights it, channeling her mind to only thing about cleansing, positivity, hope… and the thing that comes to mind is April. Her energy, her smile, her eyes. It fits everything she needs and Sarah can’t help wondering why April lost her baby. It’s not the same. She would have been a good mother, it’s easy to tell, if only given the chance. This does make it clear why things cling to her, though. There’s so much good in her. Of course the broken and damned would be drawn to someone like her.

The match glows warm and safe, but quickly begins burning toward her fingers, so she quickly lights her candles. Pink, white, black, red, they all begin to drip, but onto the little silver dishes at their base as opposed to April’s carpet. Wax is hard to clean out of the fibers, Sarah knows better than anyone. Her carpet at home is stained rainbow, although mostly the four colors in front of her, from years of incantations and prayers and clumsy fingers that shake in moments when her memories begin to overcome her.

She shakes the wood out and lays it delicately to the side, caring not to disrespect something that marks a ritual as precious and precarious as this one. The crying is still there. It’s the same tireless voice with no need for air, no need to rest lungs or vocal cords. The candles arranged and lit, she begins to arrange crystals in front of them. Amethyst, rough and sharp, and quarts, polished to glass-like clarity, disrupted only by streaks of gold and white from imperfect creation. That’s what makes it perfect, is its flaws. Then she tentatively opens the jar of ash and dips a finger in, coating it in fine powder to draw sigils on her cheeks. She’s done it so many times she doesn’t even need a mirror anymore. Once that’s done, all she has to do is grab for her conduit and shut her eyes. In spite of her angry instincts, she forces herself to focus on the painful crying that bounces off the walls and seems to grow louder, assaulting her ears. 

“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she tells the empty air. Her eyes are shut. It’s better that way than to see things she likely doesn’t want to see. The memories of bloody bodies, mangled and grotesque, are still too fresh in her mind for that. Sarah’s learned some, if not much, over the years. “That you never got to grow up. Everyone deserves that chance. If you’d let me, I’d like to help you.”

She holds out her arms the way her mother taught her fifteen odd years ago under the insistence she’d eventually be cradling an infant of her own. Even before the accident, Sarah didn’t want children. Now she’s certain she could never, in good conscience, bring another human into a world so full of pain. No one deserves to live in this world, and certainly not die in it.

In a few moments, a weight settles into her hands, and she pulls it against her chest. She doesn’t want to look at it, but she knows what it is. A baby. It’s still crying, but begins to settle with its head resting against her breast bone, listening to her heartbeat. Babies are somewhat easy to send away when she tries, but there’s something painful about having to hold a dead child and know you’re trying to send it away from a family that would have loved it.

“Shh, you’re alright. I know.” 

Sarah rocks it carefully, dutifully focusing only on its presence, lest she lose her concentration and it fades back into a spirit made of air instead of solidified. This is the only way she can comfort it, the only way to help the baby and help April. April. Thinking about her, Sarah can’t resist holding the baby even closer, her muscles flexing to tightly embrace it. A normal baby would be hurt, and she knows that, but the spirit is satisfied with the love. That’s all it’s wanted the whole time.

Just then, a gut wrenching scream claws at Sarah’s head, and she drops the baby to clap her hands over her ears. Her skin is warm and sticky. Her nose is dripping. She’s crying. But all of it, it’s thick and dark and metallic, blood, she knows before she wrenches her eyes open to look at a young woman in a hospital gown, her bottom half soaked in blood, holding the baby as it cries all over again.

“He’s my baby!” the woman screams desperately. The baby’s skin is tinted blue, something that means it slowly suffocated, no oxygen reaching its heart the way it should. “Don’t touch him! He’s mine! Mine!”

Sarah’s used to this, doesn’t think twice about the loud noise, but the next thing she knows, April is in the hallway holding a backpack in front of her torso like a shield. It can’t and won’t protect her, but people do strange things in the interest of safety.

“Sarah-”

“April, stay calm, okay? Can you see her?’

April nods, her skin turning an ashy grey not unlike silt. Her eyes are so wide, her bottom lip quivering, her hands trembling. She’s a woman in complete fear for her life, having her worldview shaken up in a way she may never be able to come to grips with. It’s one thing for someone to think they hear a ghost, the voice or cries of a loved one. To see is a whole different level. Sarah’s spent years coming to grips with it, years April hasn’t yet had.

“Okay. Come here, take my hand,” she instructs gently, wiping her blood on her jeans. It’s not the first stain that will cling to the abused, soft washed fabric. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”

The second their fingers interlock, it’s like warmth, like love itself washes through Sarah’s chest. She’s never felt this before in her life. All she wants to do is enjoy the sensation, but she knows she can’t. Right now, she needs to do her job.

“Shut your eyes, April. Take a deep breath.”

“What are they? What’s happening?”

“Just breathe.”

April drags in a slow breath, although shaky, and Sarah makes eye contact with the two spirits, still standing there and the mother upset, the baby beginning to cry again. It’s a lot. But Sarah’s job is to fix these things, so she summons up all the warmth she feels through her connection to April and allows it to wash over her, draw her focus away from the blood beginning to dry on her skin.

“I can’t help you right now. You cannot use us anymore tonight.”

The baby screams out and April flinches, but Sarah drags her a little to the left and starts blowing out the candles.

“No more tonight. I can’t help you right now. We’re done tonight.”

As soon as she blows out the last candle, they disappear, but their voices linger, however faint. It’s better, though, and Sarah squeezes April’s hand. “Hey, hey, they’re gone.You’re okay. You can open your eyes.”

It takes a moment, but then April does, and immediately her free hand cups over her mouth. The blood. Right. Sarah goes to try and wipe some of it away, but April stops her and leads her away from everything, away from the makeshift altar and the faintest whisper of what just happened, taking her all the way to a neat but warmly decorated bathroom.

“Get up on the counter, I’ll clean you up.’

Sarah obeys, shifting to get comfortable on the marble while April wets a dark red washcloth and lifts it to her face. She isn’t hurt, but there’s something tender, careful, about the way April takes her chin in hand gently and begins to wipe away sticky bloody tears. Nothing aches, and there’s no pain, but her chest feels a little tight with how close together their faces are. Sarah wants to kiss her. Wrap a hand around the back of her neck and press their lips together, find out what it feels like to connect more than just holding hands. 

She doesn’t, though. Instead, she allows April to clean her up, and then afterward, grabs her notebook to begin jotting down notes before she forgets. But as her pen begins to move, April clears her throat and Sarah looks up with a shower of sparks in her throat.

“I don’t really wanna sleep alone, so if you wanna share the bed with me…” April trails off, averts her eyes. Her lashes are thick and full, gorgeous, like something out of a magazine. “There’s room, is all I’m saying. And it’s probably more comfortable than the couch.”

“As soon as I finish my notes and get changed, that sounds good.”

April smiles and leans in, and for a moment, Sarah thinks they’re going to kiss, but then April’s lips skim her cheekbone like a dragonfly skipping across the surface of a pond, and she’s a step back again. She goes back to bed, and as Sarah writes her notes, she swears her cheek burns with the ghost of a kiss that was almost more.

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (9/13)

Connor

19 January | ~ 15:00

Upon seeing Connor’s body, I realized things are worse than I thought. I believe that the body should  be destroyed and the whole hospital cleansed. I am currently in a locked in the morgue with April and Dr. Halstead, but not Connor. I don’t know where he is. My best guess, at this time, is that he is at the center of the current chaos. April I need you to read the first page of this quicky. I don’t have much time.

-

 April wheels Sarah into the room and up to the cold metal slab with Connor’s body on it. It’s rotting, but the room’s been filled with preservatives- as has his body- to try and protect them from the smell. She struggles to her feet and steadies herself on the edge of the table. The blood that covers Connor’s ghost has been wiped off his skin, and there’s a stapled but unhealed gash from his sternum to his lower stomach, presumably from the autopsy, and someone has taken the time to drape a sheet over his waist for modesty. It’s a nice gesture. A human one.

In terms of health and safety, Sarah should probably put gloves on before she touches a body, but in terms of her job, there’s no use. She needs her hands right now. Which also means letting go of the table. The second she tries, she begins to lose her balance, only for April’s hands to settle firmly on her waist and her chest to press into Sarah’s back.

“I’ve got you,” she says gently. And Sarah believes her.

She raises shaky hands to cup the body’s face, all waxy pallid skin that flakes at her touch. Later, when they’re not in such imminent danger, she thinks she might throw up about it. But not right now, when she needs to be strong. When she carefully lifts the face, blood begins dripping from the nose, bright red and thin, like it would from a living body. Not a decomposing one.

“What the fuck,” Will hisses.

Sarah ignores him.

Carefully, she lowers the head down again and steels herself for what she’s about to do next. One by one, she pries the staples out of the chest and pulls slightly at the skin to allow the incision to fall open. In spite of broken ribs from the autopsy- they were in the procedure report- everything seems to be in place. They’re not too badly damaged, seem all right, but then she realizes something is moving.

“Sarah,” April says behind her, voice high and slightly panicked. “Sarah, what’s going on?”

The movement, as it turns out, is the body’s heart. It’s still beating. It’s black, deoxygenated, but beating slow and steady. This, right here, is the literal heart of everything that’s been happening in the hospital. It needs to be destroyed, but first, it has to be removed from the body. Sarah really doesn’t want to. But she doesn’t have a choice, and forces herself not to vomit at the thought. She’s done this before. Not in a situation like this, not with people nearby, not with the first person she’s kissed in years standing behind her, but she’s done this before.

“Dr. Halstead-”

“You can call me Will now, I think,” Will interrupts. “Since my dead b- since my dead friend tried to kill you and all.”

The slip up rings in her ears. That could be what made Connor a target in the first place. “Will, I need you to get me a couple things, can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

“Right. I need, a- a knife thing. Whatever they’re called. Something sharp and precise. And I need something I can close airtight, like a biohazard bag or something. Quickly.”

April shifts uneasily behind her. “What’re you going to do?”

“I need to get rid of the infestation.”

Thankfully, Will didn’t hear. That, or he’s choosing to ignore it as he searches for what she needs. April moves a hand from Sarah’s waist to spray the anise into the air again, which is a good idea considering what she’s about to try. It’s not a strong protector, but hopefully it’ll allow her to remove and contain the heart until it can be destroyed. But that means she definitely has to get out of this hospital. Cleanse all her tools, destroy it. And hopefully, that’ll clear the spirits haunting April too, which she should really be more concerned about than she is. April needs protecting.

“Okay, I’ve got the scalpel.” Will sets it on the edge of the table, careful not to touch the body. “Still looking for a biohazard bag.”

Sarah curls her hand around the tool and it feels so light. Her usuals are heavy with the weight of what they’ve done and the connected materials. This will have to do. She shuts her eyes and does her best to cleanse it. She doesn’t have real smoke, or any of her crystals, or anything else she’d normally use, but she focuses on making herself light and trying to extend that to the scalpel. Maybe it’ll help. Maybe not. But it isn’t like they have much time.

She braces one hand in the body’s chest, holding a lung out of the way as she starts cutting at one of the arteries near the heart. It oozes something that isn’t quite blood, but at the same time, screaming begins in the difference.

Will covers his ears. “Do you guys hear-”

The hospital PA system starts, then, talking about codes and making orders, and April runs from Sarah’s side to lock the door tightly. Sarah knows something is wrong, extremely wrong, but she can’t think about that. She keeps sawing through the artery, even as it begins to coat her hands in the not-blood and she can faintly hear April trying to keep Will from hyperventilating. Her legs are weak. It’s hard to tell how long she can stay standing up for this, but it doesn’t really matter right now.

At that moment, something cold and vaguely slimy wraps around her wrist.

She actually does come close to vomiting this time when she realizes it’s the body’s hand. Sarah refuses to call it Connor, because it isn’t him anymore. The spirit isn’t really either.  A sharp sound close to panic manages to escape as she drops the scalpel and starts trying to pull out of its grip. The body sits up, stares at her and bares its teeth as a gunshot echos in the building. Connor did something. He made someone do something. People are hurt because Sarah pissed everything off and now she’s struggling to get the body to let go of her.

“I need help,” she manages to say, and suddenly April and Will are at her side, both breathing way too heavily and frantically trying to pry fingers off her wrist. “It’s got my right hand. One of you keep trying to cut out the heart.”

“I’ve got it,” Will answers.

He picks up the scalpel and, with a sound not unlike a sob, picks up where Sarah left off. Except now, the body changes tactics entirely. It stops fighting and looks at Will with what’s left of his face. “Sunshine, why are you doing this to me?” It asks, and it sounds just like Connor. Its face flickers, and it looks like he does without the blood or decay. She sees through it, but Will probably can’t. “You’re hurting me!”

“I- I-”

Will stares at his hands, coated in the not-blood. It must look red to him.

“Will, listen to me, it’s not real. This thing isn’t Connor anymore,” Sarah says desperately. At that exact moment, the body lets go of her. This isn’t good. “It’s not Connor. Don’t listen.”

“Give me the scalpel,” it says. “You’re hurting me.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Will whimpers.

And he gives it the scalpel.

Before Sarah can blink, the blade is in her stomach, slowly dragging up in a mock of the autopsy slice on the body. It hurts, but at the same time, she feels cold. There’s blood dripping everywhere. April’s holding her again, yelling at her, but Sarah doesn’t hear it. Something here just feels wrong. 

“Will, its heart,” she chokes out. Or at least she thinks she does. Blood drools down her chin and chest. Someone needs to cut the heart out, or do anything to make this thing stop before it hurts April too. “Will-”

April says something, and then she’s pulling Sarah over to lay in the corner. She can’t breathe, and the pressure being applied to her stomach makes her squirm. If she’s going to die, she needs a blessing, to be cleansed so she doesn’t linger, but she can’t say as much because nothing in her body is listening. 

“Book,” Sarah manages to say.

A moment later, her notebook is in her hands and she’s scribbling down notes as fast as she can. This book could help people, including April, because the funny thing is, Sarah knows she’s dying. She can feel it. Her handwriting is getting more and more sloppy.

She points to the last phrase in the notebook, smearing blood everywhere, and as April tries to decipher it and find the page which lists the dying blessing, Sarah watches Will cry keep pulling at the body’s heart. It isn’t coming out well, not without the scalpel, but he’s trying so hard and the resistance is what mattered because Connor is this thing’s host. And Connor, he loves Will a lot.

Another loud bang echoes in Sarah’s ears. This is a war zone, but of a different sort. April finds the right page and she’s reading it as the world starts to fade at the edges. Her hearing fades to a ringing noise that would ordinarily give Sarah the worst headache. 

She’s cold. But April’s here, and Will is working at the body’s heart, and at least everything will be okay. Everything’s going to be okay because she helped.

Her eyes flutter shut. 

There isn’t a light to walk toward, or the voice of a loved one beckoning her ever closer. It’s just dark and cold. Sarah isn’t scared of it. She made her peace with death years ago, before she became what she is now. This is the end, and she trusts that she’s done what she’s supposed to, and April will be okay.

Her chest stops hurting. 

Her heart finally gives up only ten minutes after they entered the morgue.

[cupidmarwani-archive]

Afterward (8/13)

Chicago, Illinois: The Sexton Baby, Connor Rhodes

19 January 2019 | 09:00 Local Time

Dr. Halstead is getting Connor’s body exhumed for me, although it meant talking to Connor’s father. From what I gather, his father Cornelius is, for lack of a better term, an asshole. But he consented for whatever reason, and Connor’s body is being dug up as we speak. Officially, it’s for religious purposes, which I suppose isn’t entirely incorrect.

After Connor is exhumed and brought to the pathology lab, I will be allowed to look at him- it was determined they don’t yet find me to be stable enough to leave the hospital no matter what I say. April hasn’t left my side all morning, and no spirits have come to visit.

-

Shortly after Sarah wakes up to the sunlight in her face, a note from Will saying she’ll be able to see the body but not leave the hospital, and April still laying on her chest, she tries her best to move without disrupting April’s light sleep. She needs her coat, and probably her backpack, to make something that can protect her strongly from Connor while she examines and possibly destroys his body. It’s not something she enjoys, but it has to be done.

Unfortunately, April quickly stirs, mumbles catching on her tongue and hr lashes stuck together in the night. Sarah can’t resist cupping her face, easing her into the world with a gentle caress against her cheek and the hope of sharing more kisses in one of their few moments of peace. If she’s lucky, they’ll have a bit of time to themselves before Connor’s body gets here- provided there’s no imminent threat, of course.

“Good morning, beautiful,” she whispers, and April sits up to kiss her again. It’s just as perfect as last time, so perfect that she can hardly stand it. The best thing she can imagine is to melt into the bed and focus on nothing but April, and her warmth, and the feel of her soft skin and the taste of her chapstick and the electric feeling that sparks in her veins every time they touch. If she believed in soulmates, she thinks this must be what they feel like. Nothing else can describe the way this feels. So perfect, so… so everything she’s ever wanted out of life but isn’t allowed to have. And it’s that in her mind that makes her pull away. “Look, April, I’m not- I can’t stay in Chicago, you have to know that, right?”

“I know, but… don’t, right now.”

Sarah can’t deny her that, because she wants to at least cling to a moment of normalcy. She wants to be loved- everyone wants to be loved- and if this is the only way she can have it, is by pretending and burying herself in April’s gentle voice, then she’ll take it. At least for the time being.

She allows herself a few minutes of gentle kisses and the feeling of April’s body against hers, but then she has to sit up when Will arrives, Connor behind him as always and seemingly angrier than usual. The clock in Sarah’s periphery is speeding along, an indication that Connor is changing time again, trying to prevent them from getting anything done again. She can tell that April and Will aren’t seeing him right now, but she is, and that’s the part of this that matters. He’s angry with her, and she’s a little afraid of how he might express that, especially given that April and Sarah are both right here for him to hurt. She doesn’t think he’d hurt Will. He seems to still love him.

“Let’s get you ready to go see him,” Will says, his eyes trained on the speeding clock. “April, can you get her a wheelchair? Just in case?”

April nods and, before leaving, kisses Sarah’s temple as tenderly as she does everything else. Once she leaves, Will starts by pulling the white clip of her finger, and then reaches carefully into her hospital gown to peel off the monitors. His hands tremble slightly, and he’s overly cautious of touching anywhere he shouldn’t. She appreciates that- too many men, even doctors, wouldn’t be so careful. But her IV, he leaves in place, taping over it to secure it further, in fact.

“You need to take this with you. You’re still really fragile. And right here-”

He hands her a toothpaste tab and one of those mini mouthwash bottles, the best in lieu of a toothbrush. She nods in thanks and gratefully takes the opportunity to clear the gross taste and probably terrible breath from her mouth. The best she can, anyway. She needs a real toothbrush, and wouldn’t say no to a shower. This is more important, though, she tells herself as April comes back with a wheelchair, an IV stand sticking out of it. Will starts to transfer the bags of medication dripping into her veins while April comes to the side of the bed, holds out a hand, and steadies her as she sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed.

The moment her socked feet touch the floor, she realizes she’s weaker than she thought. Sarah nearly collapses only halfway to the wheelchair, which is only a couple feet away. Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to have one, after all. By the time she settles into it, Will has moved all her medication, April is still holding her hand, and Connor has started knocking things over. Nothing big, nothing loud, but little things so Sarah knows he’s upset. The little foil packet the toothpaste tab was in. One of the pillows on her hospital bed. Then he’s moving the chairs, and shaking the bed, and rattling the clock, and April and Will both stare at the empty (in their eyes) room in shock.

“It’s Connor,” she explains. “He’s upset.”

As soon as those words come out of her mouth, Connor sees fit to grab her wheelchair and try to turn it on its side, spill her out of it so she can’t go see his body.

“My backpack,” Sarah says quickly, pointing to it in the corner as Will struggles to steady her and looks around desperately for Connor. The grief holds him even now. “April, in my backpack, there’s a bottle of perfume. I need you to spray it.”

“What’s in it-”

“Now!”

April scrambles over to the backpack and rifles through it, one of her fingers turning red because she must have nicked it on something- which means it’ll all have to be cleansed, and April possibly stitched up, but not right now. It feels like forever, but in only a couple of seconds she comes up with the bottle and sprays it into the air, hitting all of them with an overwhelming smell not unlike licorice. Will inhales at the wrong time and promptly starts coughing, but it weakens Connor’s hold. He can’t move the wheelchair anymore, and time begins to return to its usual pace.

“Diluted anise. They hate it,” Sarah explains. “Is everyone okay?”

Still coughing, Will gives a thumbs up, while April breathes an affirmative and finds a bandage in one of the cabinets. It’ll hold until she can clean it out, and she doesn’t seem to be bleeding too profusely, so everything’s fine. Now they have to go see Connor’s body.

“I’m bringing this,” April says, slipping the bottle of perfume into the pocket of her scrubs.

“Good call.”

Seemingly almost recovered from inhaling the vapor, Will hoarsely asks, “Is there anything else in that backpack we should bring with us?”

“Um.”

No, because it’s got blood on it, and most of it is useless if not dangerous.

“Just my notebook on the bed, and a pen. So I can take notes. The perfume should be enough to keep Connor from doing anything too drastic while we’re down there.”

Connor snarls at her and tries to kick her wheelchair, but he’s not strong enough to actually move it this time around. They need to get going though, which everyone seems to know. After April sets her notebook in Sarah’s lap, Will pushes her out of the room, his footfalls steady and consistent, and April holds her hand and walks beside her. It feels strange to be pushed around like this and not be in immediate danger. Usually when she isn’t able to walk on her own, it’s because the spirits have taken hold of her or the things around her. But this time, it’s because there are people with her who don’t want to see her hurt worse than she already it. The idea is so novel, so good, that Sarah doesn’t entirely know what to do with herself about it.

The hallways are busy, busy enough that no one stares at the three of them or asks where they’re going. Every foot down the hall, every floor closer to the morgue, brings a heavier weight to Sarah’s shoulders and increases the pressure on her lungs. By the time they’re outside the correct door, she’s trying not to show how hard it is to breathe. It must be Connor’s doing, although he hasn’t followed them down here.

“Do either of you feel, I dunno, like it’s- like it’s harder to breathe?” Will asks.

“Yeah,” April says, and she sounds it.

“It’s the possession,” Sarah says, and she sounds the most breathless of all three. “It doesn’t want us here. Just keep breathing deep, and if you have to leave, do it.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

April’s words burrow into Sarah’s heart, find their home in her arteries except they don’t block the flow- they make it better. She feels, in a heartbeat, a million times better than she did before. Her veins flood with the same electricity that she gets from every touch April bestows upon her, but compounded by a thousand, and whatever happens, she feels like she can manage it. 

Will swipes his key card and opens the door.