The Game of Ghost

Chapter One - Finding The Beginning

The grey building towered over me menacingly, casting me into its dark shadow as I looked to the morbid, mood-matching clouds and took a deep breath. Mom, Dad, if you can hear me, please help me take care of Sarah. If this doesn't work then I don't know what else to do.

Squaring my shoulders, I inhaled deeply before nervously brushing a strand of thin, blonde hair behind my ear. This will be the last time. It has to be.

I crept slowly up the steps, placing my hand on the cool, steel railing for support. My legs felt heavy and my heart began hammering in my chest as I approached the large, multistory door which was mostly made up of stained-glass windows from before when the place used to be a church.

This was always the worst part of fetching her- greeting the matron. As if the devil herself had heard my thoughts, the large door swung open with a loud creak that echoed throughout the bare interior.

She scowled at me disapprovingly from over the thick glasses perched on the tip of her beak-like nose. Take that and add her judgement-filled gaze, a healthy punch of  ugly and you get the not-so-pretty package of bitch named Beatrice.

"Lindsey." She greeted icily.

"Beatrice." I replied, mimicking her voice and tone. Childish? Maybe. Do I care? Nope, not one bit.

She rolled her eyes and stepped aside, glaring at me as I nudged past her and walked up to the front desk where a copy of the eviction notice as well as a letter of Acknowledgment of Debt lay ready and waiting.

A petite girl with wild, curly hair and freckles walked in just as I initialed the last page. She looked up at me curiously from beneath her lashes she couldn't have been older than twelve.

I gave her a friendly smile and a small wave. She looked surprised but smiled back before jumping at Beatrice's booming voice and lowering her gaze to the floor once more.

"Ah, there you are, Tanika," the matron said without looking up from the filing cabinet she was rifling through, "be a dear and fetch patient number," she hesitated, pressing her glasses flat against her face as she pulled out a thick file, "patient number eighty three. On the third floor."

I bit my tongue at that. We'd already fought about the fact that St. Morgan's Rehab Center number their patients. They literally see them as numbers instead of people. It's probably why there were so many repeat patients, why nobody actually got better here.

It was a house for the broken. Except families didn't send their loved ones there to get better, they sent the ones they couldn't handle there to be forgotten.

Ever since they expanded, adding the mental asylum building directly behind the rehab center, there have been rumors about payments being made to the matron herself. It wouldn't surprise me one bit. Apparently this once-off payment ensured that the patients either never got better, or got transferred to the asylum. According to Sarah, anyone transferred never made it out.

All of this was terrifying, but it was the only place I was able to afford- 'was' being the operative word. Our inheritance had finally run out, I'd sold the last of our family's assets, but still it wasn't enough to help her. To say I felt defeated is an understatement.

"Hey, Linz." A voice as light as a feather came from behind me. I fought the hot tears threatening to spill over and steadied my breathing before plastering a smile on my face and spinning around to greet my sister.

Her heart-shaped face was pale, her arms noticeably thin, even beneath the coverings of her oversized shirt which she wore to hide the scars left by the needles.