Page 7 of Noctis

“I’m not fucking hallucinating,” she screamed into his face. “It’s real. It stands there, and it fucking looks at me.”

The doctor, whom I couldn’t help noticing was handsome enough to play one on television, laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I know you think it’s real.”

“It is real.” Tears spilled down her face. “Why won’t anyone believe me? I want to go home.”

“Not until you get better,” said a female nurse hovering in the background.

Our nurse escort hurried us onward, but I glanced back to find Laura staring wildly past the doctor into the room behind him. For a second, I looked too, half expecting to see something standing in the corner, but there was nothing.

“Is she all right?” I asked when we stopped outside the room that was apparently to be mine. It was only three doors down from Laura’s, which felt far too close to where things supposedly stood in corners and stared. Why hadn’t I refused to move from the car? It wasn’t as though Tyler would have dragged me inside by the hair.

The nurse—Neil, according to his name badge—gave me a reassuring smile. “Laura’s been having some difficulties, but it’s nothing that won’t get worked out. Medication type and dosage can sometimes take time to get right.”

“Comforting,” I said. “How long’s she been here?”

“A couple of weeks.”

Long enough to have already changed rooms and become convinced that something had followed her from one to the other.

Neil left us soon after that so I could get “settled in.”

“She probably already had a lot of issues,” Tyler pointed out. “Before she came here.”

“Probably,” I agreed, although it was difficult to dismiss her quite so easily after seeing the terror on her face. The shouting had subsided, leaving a conversational murmur with words I couldn’t make out.

Tyler surveyed the room with an enthusiasm that grated on me. “Well, this isn’t too bad,” he said, wearing the amiable smile of an estate agent trying to distract a buyer from the damp. “You’ve got a desk. That’ll be great for drawing at.” He poked his head through the other door. “Your own bathroom.” Finally, he crossed to the window. “A great view.”

“I suppose it has two things going for it,” I said.

Tyler frowned. “What’s that?”

“No padded walls and no bars on the windows.”

He didn’t respond as I joined him at the window. Predictably, the “great view” comprised yet more trees, their rain-darkened branches crowding together beneath a gray sky as the light failed. Tyler gave them only a cursory glance before turning away to unpack my bag.

“I can do that,” I protested.

He offered me a smile. “I don’t mind.”

I watched as he found a home for every object he pulled out, folding my clothes into drawers and placing my sketchpad reverently on the desk. “A cynic might think you were making sure I don’t change my mind,” I commented.

He laughed, but the sound was strained enough to make me suspect I’d come uncomfortably close to the truth. “Of course not. Don’t be silly.”

“So if I said now that I’ve looked around, I don’t want to stay here, you’ll drive me home?”

“Sure.” His attention remained fixed on the bag. “But I really do think this place will be good for you. It’ll give you a chance to reassess what you want from life with no distractions.”

I turned back to the window, where a flicker of movement between the trees caught my eye. I pressed my forehead to the glass and peered into the shadows beneath the branches.

Nothing.

Whatever I’d seen had vanished. It could have been my imagination or some kind of animal, although it had looked too big to be an animal. Too upright, as well. I couldn’t think of anything in The New Forest that fit that description unless someone had released a colony of bears and forgotten to mention it.

“Are you listening to me?”

Tyler’s question brought me back to earth with a bump. “Yeah.”

“What was I saying then?”