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One foot from life
The elevator doors open with a ding on the basement level of Thomasville General Hospital. During the day this floor buzzes with activity as people are wheeled between the hive of lab facilities and their hospital rooms, but at two thirty in the morning it is as silent as the grave my passenger is bound for. I take a deep steadying breath and wheel the stretcher out into the deserted hall.
A door slams somewhere behind me and I jump at least four feet, grabbing for my gun. There is more moisture in the Gobi desert than in my mouth and my heart thuds like a jackhammer with my sternum for the concrete.
“Calm down, damn it,” I tell myself.
Of course it is only a machine that costs more than my house tending to its own business. A late night cycling of parts that must be performed. After four years I should be used to that. Still an instant later when another machine produces the sound of rattling chains I almost faint.
The noise stops and the corridor is silent except for the gentle hum of the ventilation system and the sound of my breathing.
The closer we get to the morgue, the more sweat breaks out on my brow. I hate this part of my job. I hate it more than the autopsies. I hate it more than the late night calls. I hate it more than little kids in car wrecks. Is it weird to hate going to the morgue at night worse than things that would send most people running to therapy for an elephant sized dose of Thorazine? Probably, but I am absolutely and childishly terrified that one night something is going to get up off one of those damned slabs.
Now is not a good time, but of course Matt, the other coroner’s assistant’s tales of the ghost he’s seen in this hallway flood back into my mind. I’ve never seen a thing here, but I think that that might actually make it worse. Instead I jump at shadows seen from the corner of my eye.
The dead girl and I reach the morgue, and I fumble through my bulky key ring until I find the right one, opening the heavy security doors. I push them open and wheel Janet Tubresky inside, flipping on all the lights. Enough safety lights stay on to navigate one’s way easily, but I rely on light to keep away the monsters, like most humans.
“All right Janet, let’s get you in the freezer and a strong drink into me,” I say to the dead girl. The Deputy Coroner has a half full bottle of Maker’s Mark in her desk and I plan on that being my next stop. I want it to be my first, but there are rules about how long a corpse can be at room temperature. Truthfully though, it’s just too creepy to have Janet as a drinking companion.
I open the heavy freezer door with a grunt and a cool draft blows in my face. I wheel the girl in and something touches my wrist! I wheel around, careen off a patch of ice and hit the floor in a heap, trying to yank my gun free.
I swallow around a lump the size of a small child and say, “Oh, fuck! Just a draft damn it.” I am panting like I’ve just run a marathon and now I feel completely ridiculous.
Of course no one saw it, and the people in the freezer can’t tell. I try to let that comfort me as I get up and finish pushing the girl over to a corner of the freezer. We‘re now directly under the cafeteria freezer, and both work off of the same cooling system. Think about that next time you eat hospital food.
“Okay, I need to check and see if my hair is gray and get that drink,” I say spinning on my heel. Then I wish my gun was still out.
The stretcher nearest the door has an open empty body bag draped partially off of it. We are not in the habit of storing empty body bags in the freezer.
I suddenly know with an awful awareness that the thing from the body bag is right behind me, and I am frozen as sure as the patch of ice near the door. The lump in my throat expands to the size of a small apartment complex, and all the hair on my body stands up.
There’s the door, only five feet away. I want to run, but know in my primitive brain that running only makes the predator attack. Only five feet. Surely I can make it five short feet to safety. I take one shaking step forward and fingers like icicles caress up my spine. I can feel its cool stinking breath on the back of my neck.
I take another step, and now the door is three feet away, but the freezing fingers trail over the back of my neck.
Oh, God! It’s actually going to kill me. Here and now I know this thing is going tear out my insides and lick up the steaming pool of blood.
My hands shake and my teeth chatter violently, and it’s not from the room temperature. I take another step. Two feet away and the icy fingers caress my earlobe.
One more step. One foot away from life. One lousy foot and the cruelest part is that I can see into the brightly lit hallway perfectly from here. I can see it. I could reach out a hand and it would be in the hall way, but I know it will not allow me the final step. I try anyway and those fingers, cold as death and hard as steel close on my arm.
Something unseen rushes forward and the freezer door slams itself shut, leaving us in the dark.
“I really wish you would have run,” it whispers against my ear with ice lips. And then the screaming starts.
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