Chapter 8 - The Ghost Behind the Glass
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Detective Mason spun around instantly, drawing his glock and training it on the observation window beside my bed.
My heart stopped beating.
Standing directly behind the double-paned frosted glass, illuminated by the dim fluorescent lights of the adjoining empty room, was a figure.
A woman.
She was impossibly thin, her skin pale as chalk, wearing a ragged grey hospital gown. Her long dark hair hung in damp, tangled matts around her face.
And hanging around her neck, gleaming brightly under the dim light, was a heavy silver pendant—the exact same vintage emerald-and-silver necklace Emily Morgan wore in every single wedding photograph scattered across my bed.
I couldn't breathe. My chest locked inside the rigid plaster cast.
The woman slowly raised her hand and pressed her palm flat against the cold glass. Her dark, sunken eyes locked directly onto mine.
Ethan dropped to his knees in the hallway, screaming like a madman.
"EMILY!" Ethan shrieked, beating his head against the doorframe. "EMILY, STAY AWAY FROM ME! YOU'RE DEAD! YOU DIED FOUR YEARS AGO!"
Mason didn't hesitate. He kicked open the door connecting my room to the adjoining observation suite. "POLICE! DON'T MOVE!"
By the time Mason slammed the door open, the room was completely empty.
The observation chair was knocked over. The heavy blackout curtains were swaying wildly near the open emergency exit door at the back of the suite, which led straight into the hospital's dark service stairwell.
Mason sprinted down the stairwell, his boots echoing loudly off the concrete walls, but the woman was already gone.
He returned two minutes later, out of breath, his face pale, holding a small object he had found lying on the concrete floor near the exit door.
He walked back into my room and held it out in his gloved palm.
It was a wet piece of paper—a fresh printout of my hospital patient file, stamped with today's date.
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And written across the bottom in fresh, dark red ink was a single handwritten line:
“She took my place. Now she pays my price.”
