Lovers From Beyond Ep. 08

"Who said that?"

"My name's Julia, but most of the candy-stripers just call me Jules, or Julie." The woman replied. "You got a smoke?"

Did a ghost just ask for a cigarette? Bill wondered. He grasped his head in both of his hands, because he really, really felt like he was losing his sanity. In an abandoned mental hospital, of all places. Oh, doctor, get the padded jacket for me, will ya?

Like a loon!

Bill tried to speak, only to feel his lips flapping away uselessly. Concentrating, he tried a second time. "How, how do you, uh, know that I'll be safe here?"

"The nuts don't like this room." Julie replied. "They stay away from here."

Well, that makes perfect sense, Bill thought. Perfectly natural, because nuts in a nut factory are naturally abhorrent to certain rooms due to... Hell, he couldn't even begin to figure out what the reason was. He'd just about given up on trying to figure out how he was able to speak with a ghost, on top of that.

What would Hank have done in such a situation? He'd have said 'Just wing it and get the shot.' That's what he'd say, Bill knew. And so, he started winging it.

"Why do the other ghosts stay away from this room, and you don't?" He asked.

"Because I'm not a nut like the rest of them."

Bill opened his mouth to reply, when he felt a strange shudder course past him, like an invisible wave of energy. It lasted several seconds. "What the hell was that?"

"That was midnight." Julie answered. "That means that we're in the same place now, because I brought you into a spot where the energy pools around and makes magic happen. You're in the ghost world now."

"What does that mean?"

"I'll show you." Julie's footsteps were clearly heard. She stepped over toward where the doorway was. "Close your eyes for a second, because the lights can be a little bright in here."

Close my eyes, Bill thought, puzzled. He was already standing in a pitch-black room! What the hell did he need to close his eyes for?

"You got your eyes closed?" Julie asked.

Bill went ahead and humored the ghost, even though he didn't see any point in closing his eyes. "Yeah."

Suddenly, the color behind his eyelids went from a deep black to a bright red, as if some real strong lighting had just been turned on. This instant illumination disconcerted him, as much as the idea of having a conversation with a ghost did. Bill fought back yet another rush of fear, and waited until his eyes had acclimated themselves to the sudden change.

After about a minute, Bill lifted his eyelids open and took in a small, nearly empty room. The walls were a bright, glossy white. The floor was covered in small blue tiles. In the center of the room was a small reservoir sink for collecting water. Along the wall were hung three industrial hoses clamped upright by thick metal guards. The hosing stations were each a couple of feet apart. They appeared plenty functional and very unlike the other, more decrepit parts of the old hospital he'd seen earlier.

Slowly, Bill turned around and took in the sight of the ghost that had brought him into the room. It was a woman, a real woman! She stood at maybe five foot four. She wore a white doctor's frock over a white blouse, white pantyhose and white sneakers. On her head, she had on an old-style nurse's cap. The woman beneath the uniform looked to be in her mid-forties, with a countenance that looked both stern and wise, red hair styled into a bouffant and lips tinged in a simple, soft red. She had a motherly look to her, Bill noted, somewhat attractive, but she also looked dejected, and tired.

Bill gulped. "You're real."

"We're all real here." Julie nodded. "We're all the same here."

"You mean, even me?"

Julie nodded again.

"Am I a ghost?" Bill asked, mentally tracing his steps in trying to figure out when he had crossed over from the land of the living. Had Julie really pushed him into an elevator shaft somewhere down the line?

"I can't answer that." The nurse shrugged. "You are and you're not. You're in an in-between place where ghosts and living people are both real."

"Why'd you bring me here?"

"Because if I hadn't, the nut-jobs would have found you sooner or later. They would have killed you." Julie explained. "Then you would have become one of them, and you'd be haunting this place forever like they are. "

"So I'm still a real person here? And so are they?"

"Right." Julie nodded. "The big difference is that you can defend yourself here."

"Why would I need to defend myself?" Bill asked, as he rushed to the door and looked out.

Bill's eyes took in a well-lighted corridor, with long light enclosures, bright white walls, and simple, speckled brown floor tiles that were twelve inches across. He could see doors with nametag sliders, announcing the purpose of the room behind them. He also observed a handful of extra gurneys lined up against the walls. Bill was not in the present, he realized, as he darted back into the room and shut the door behind him. He turned to address the nurse, who was leaning lazily against a wall and reminiscing something or other.

"Are you saying that the ghosts will try to attack me?" Bill asked.

"They will, only they're not ghosts here. They're all as real as you are. It's not as scary as it sounds, though. If they were old and feeble when they were alive, they'll be old and feeble in this place. You can push them out of the way or just outrun them if you have to. There are a couple of real creeps in here, though, that you'll want to steer clear of. They will rip your heart out and eat it right in front of you, if you give them a chance to do it."

Bill shivered. "I want to get out of here."

"You can't. The magic will hold you here until it goes away. Once the sun starts coming up, you'll be back in your world. Until that happens, I'm afraid that you're stuck with us."

Bill tried to grasp as much of the information as he could. "Okay, so why won't the ghost people come in here, into this specific room?"

"This used to be a washroom." Julie pushed herself away from the wall and took a few steps toward the center of the room. "We'd wash off bedpans and gurneys in here, anything made out of metal that had gotten any sort of bodily fluids on them. In sixty-seven, they stopped using this as a washroom. Whenever somebody died in this hospital, their body was brought down here until the coroner could come by to pick it up.

"The people that died upstairs, I guess they didn't know they were dead. Their ghosts were confused and standing beside their bodies, right next to their beds. They'd watch as the doctors examined their corpses. They came along as their body was rolled into the elevator and moved down here. When the gurney their body was on was wheeled into this room, that's when they figured out they were dead. They don't like knowing they are dead, and so they don't like to come in here."

Julie pointed high up on the walls, where two prominent air vents were seen. "This place has good ventilation, so all the gases a dead person gives off are quickly blown up and out through a shaft that leads to the roof. That's why they started using this room to keep the dead patients, so they wouldn't stink up the whole place. Besides, the service elevator is just a few yards down the hall." She laughed. "One time, the orderlies were wheeling a body out, while a deliveryman was bringing in a dolly full of milk crates. You should have seen the look on that poor man's face. What about that smoke?"

"Sorry, I'm not a smoker." Bill shook his head. "What about you? What's your deal?"

Julie sighed and stepped further away from him. "I was working with a new girl one night. We'd been asked to sedate a patient on the third floor, so he could be moved into another room. It seems he'd decided to redecorate the walls with his own feces. The orderlies were assigned to clean the room up. I asked the new girl to prepare a syringe with one of the benzodiazepines were we using back then. Either she was so nervous that she didn't put enough in, or she used something else entirely. I didn't have the time to supervise her because I was busy helping to hold the patient down. The girl gave me the syringe, I administered the shot, and we waited a few minutes for it to take effect.

"The patient was faking it. When two of the orderlies moved away to get the straightjacket ready, there were only a couple of people still holding him down. Well, the man turned on the both of us. He managed to grab me. The jerk bit me in the neck, deep enough to sever my carotid artery. I bled to death before anybody could get the bleeding stopped."

"That's... That's horrible." Bill grimaced.

"You're telling me." Julie said. "I guess my death really caught me by surprise, because I wasn't ready to leave my life yet. I've been haunting the hospital ever since." She turned to face Bill. "You're not the type that gets a kick out of looking at dead bodies, are you?"

"No! Why would you even ask me that?"

"It's one of the tricks us ghosts can do." Julie elaborated. "We can choose to appear like we normally did in life, like I am now. Or we can look the way we looked at the moment we died. That tends to scare the crap out of living people. Would you like to see what I looked like at the moment I passed away?"

"Hell no!"

Julie grinned a mischievous, malicious grin. For a moment, Bill wondered if she was going to do it anyway. Her countenance soon softened, however.

"You're the squeamish type, aren't you?" Julie asked. "Not the type I'd expect from a bunch of Scooby Doo ghost hunters. That's when I died, by the way. In 1969, the first year that cartoon came out. So, I've been roaming the corridors here for over forty years. How do I look for an eighty-five year old woman?"

Quietly, Bill took in her form. She had a pleasant enough look to her, when he didn't consider that she'd been dead for longer than he'd been alive. Under that loose hospital frock, he knew that Julie had some kind of sizable boobs, because they'd been pressed tight against his back earlier.

"You look okay, I guess." He squirmed, because flirting with dead women was definitely not one of his stronger suits.

"Pfft." Julie scorned. "I would have preferred to bring that man named Hank down here instead of you, except he's nearly young enough to be my son."

Bill was just realizing that Julie had been insulted by his off-handed remark. Tactfully, he decided to change the subject. "I've always wondered about this. Can you tell me how a building gets haunted in the first place?"

"Maybe because a lot of people died inside it?" Julie shrugged. "Satanism was pretty popular here in Homestead Valley, around the time that I was killed. Maybe someone did a ritual here in 1966. That's when the ghosts started becoming trapped."

"Why 1966?"

"Because that's the year on all of the calendars I've seen here." Julie admitted. "This in-between place hasn't aged since then. No matter what year any of these ghosts died, we're all present in 1966. I can show you one of the calendars, if you'd like to see one."

Bill had a better idea. "You said that if a ghost pushes me, I can push it back, right? I want to go out to the lobby to see what my friends are doing. Maybe they're in trouble."

Julie scrutinized him for a long pause, as if she hadn't expected Bill to have any guts in him at all. "In that case, why don't you follow me?"

They left the former washroom and crept up the flight of stairs they'd used previously. The whole time, Bill was trying to decipher exactly what sort of pocket dimension they were now in. The stairs were clean and well lighted, and the handrail might have needed polishing, but otherwise everything was fully functional and matched the era Julie had mentioned. It was as if someone had taken a snapshot, or better yet, a virtual tour from a specific date in 1966, and made it three-dimensional. Maybe he was a virtual person right then, Bill imagined.

The two didn't stop at the first floor, but at Julie's suggestion they kept ascending the steps until they reached the second floor.

Bill had a thought. "Will the ghosts come after you?"

"Oh, they do sometimes." Julie admitted. "They even manage to kill me every so often, if enough of them corner me and gang up on me. When that happens, I always black out for a while. Later, I find myself standing inside the infirmary and scratching my head at what took place. I couldn't begin to explain why that happens. Maybe the universe just has a twisted sense of humor that way."

Bill stared into the older woman's face in disbelief.

"If any of the nut-bags start coming after us, you really need to get your motor running." Julie grimly explained. "If they kill you, your body will be found in your present, but your soul will end up here in the past. And let me tell you, haunting old buildings is not all it's cracked up to be."

Bill peered down the hall, making sure no dead souls were on their way over to maul him. "What happens next?"

Julie stepped forward and took the lead. "I'll walk you to another stairwell, one that lies just past the lobby. We'll go down a ways and take a peek, to see if your friends are still inside the hospital. If they aren't, I guess we'll just find somewhere else to hole up until morning. Or maybe we'll go back to the washroom, if you want to wait down there. That's usually the safest place in this entire building."

Bill nodded and followed, although a part of him wished they'd never left the washroom. Another part of him wished he'd never left his motel room that night. Bill found himself cursing Hank for having talked him into taking part in the ghost hunt. He also hoped he wasn't about to become the newest resident in the haunted hospital.

Next, he thought of Julie. Bill could barely stand the thought of staying inside that building for the rest of the night, let alone for forty years. How did Julie pass her time? Waiting tirelessly in her little nursing station, or staring out a window somewhere? What kinds of things could she possibly contemplate for over forty years?

In his mind, Bill considered what he'd miss the most, if their roles were reversed. He'd miss having contact with other people, miss hearing people laugh, or watching them smile after he made some off-color joke. He'd miss holding a woman's hand, or having a woman slide up next to him. He'd miss the way a woman would lean her head on his shoulder as they gazed into a sunset somewhere along the crew's many stops all across the country. And poor Julie, poor, poor Julie, had been trapped in that decrepit old building for such a long time.

Julie had been staying away from him, he sensed, ever since she'd become a corporeal creature. Back when she was a ghost, when he couldn't see her, hadn't she'd been covering his mouth or holding his hand, or pressing her body tightly against his? Granted, Julie didn't have a whole lot of choice in her actions and the situation was one of dire peril. But regardless, Bill had truly felt a motherly sense of protection coming through, a maternal kindness. Ever since she'd introduced Bill into that strange limbo universe, however, she seemed to have become really shy with him.

And her reaction to that comment Bill had made about her looks, well, that only proved his point. Julie was very lonely and yearning for human interaction. She probably hadn't spoken with another living human being for ages. And here was dumb, ignorant Bill, thinking solely about himself and his predicament, and too naïve to understand the signs she was giving off.

He could change that, he thought, as a sly grin started forming on his face. He'd collected himself a lot of snappy pick-up lines and salacious witticisms from watching Hank preying on women in bars all across the country. The devil in him decided to use some of those lines on Julie. The idea of messing around with the ghost of an older woman was even more appealing, when he considered that it was something Hank could not lay claim to. That hunky bastard sure did love to brag about his physical conquests when they were on the road.

Bill took in the back of Julie's marching form. She was several inches shorter than he was, and her waist was a little thick, but he didn't mind that so much. Her posterior looked meaty and sensuous, as it swayed back and forth with her strides. Try as he might, he could not bring himself to visualize the woman wearing anything else other than the antiquated nurse uniform she had on.

What were sexual mores like in the late sixties, Bill wondered. That was when the whole hippie movement was going on, right? And hadn't the older, conservative types hated that, the people that were around Julie's age? What would she think of him, if he started flirting with her?

There was only one way to find out, Bill knew. He cleared his throat. "So, uh, how old did you say you were?"

"Twenty-five." Julie replied. Bill caught a trace of humor in those words. "Don't tell me that women in your time give up their ages without a fight."

"Well, I'm thirty-two. And I have no problem with admitting that to people. So, how old were you when you first became a ghost?"

"I told you that before. I was forty-five when I died."

"Wow." Bill kidded. "That's only a couple of years past the age of the dinosaurs."

Julie's head turned to the side, long enough to give him a short dosage of the evil eye. "I see that good manners are no longer in vogue."

Bill already had his next line ready. "So, what do you dress like, when you're not at work?"

"Like your mother does." Julie snapped.

The sharp retort nearly made Bill laugh. It also threw his remaining pickup lines into confusion. He had managed to tick Julie off again, he knew that much. While this wasn't completely unexpected, it did make him adjust tactics. In his mind, he groped at how a stud like Hank might quickly regain control of the situation.

"You know what I heard," Bill began. "I heard that after a certain age, when women haven't gotten laid in a long time, they just forget how to kiss. I heard they start to get cobwebs down there."