Haunted Rayne

1 | Whispers of the Watcher

PRESENT DAY

Aurora Heights Psychiatric Center
Blackburn, Michigan
September 17, 2018

┈┈

Beneath the cloudless morning sky, Rayne Foster felt an overwhelming sense of vulnerability, as if at any moment the ashen-azure expanse could draw her into its void as easily as a dust-bunny to a vacuum. A lone barn swallow soared overhead, its tawny belly vibrant against steely blue wings. Its form cast a fleeting shadow over her eyes. Dressed in jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a blue-plaid flannel, Rayne should have been warm—if not sweating—beneath the harvest sun. Yet she shivered, teeth clamoring like a little wind-up toy.

"Can we please just get out of here?" she murmured. Something had caused the hair on the nape of her neck to stand, and she was more than ready to pop a few pills and take a nap already.

Sharing a seat beside her on the front steps of the psychiatric hospital, Officer Emma Scott removed a paisley handkerchief from the breast pocket of her uniform. She dabbed a pebble of perspiration from her forehead. "Ten more minutes, kiddo."

Rayne pinched the bridge of her nose. "Fine."

"You think she'll show?" asked the officer.

"Not in this lifetime."

"But you want her to?"

"I don't know."

The officer nodded. "Then, we'll wait."

"Fine . . ."

The sun was too bright, the noises too loud. Anxiety fused to the walls of Rayne's chest like a sticky tar. It clogged her organs, and quickly, it began to nauseate her, churning her stomach in a way that left her feeling dizzy.

The officer tried again. "We could swing by the house on our way out if you want."

"No," Rayne answered stiffly. "If she isn't here, then there's a reason. Don't torture the old woman, and stop torturing me."

"Well, you shouldn't leave without saying goodbye to your mom. Let's wait a while."

"Don't tell me what to do," Rayne snapped, lashing out the way teenagers often do. Pivoting on the concrete stairwell, her curls, cropped short and dense as summer stormclouds, brushed her cheek as she studied the building behind her.

It was almost too clean, too quiet. The brickwork had been scrubbed, the thresholds power-washed, the railings sterilized down to the screws. It gleamed with a shine so severe it made imperfection feel profane, and bleeding, a crime. This place hadn't healed her. It had only archived her. Polished the grief, sanitized the rage, then handed her back like something successfully contained.

She couldn't wait to leave.

Thirteen months ago, she'd been ushered through its doors under circumstances she still couldn't comprehend. A crime. A collapse. Aurora Hospital first, then here—its sister psychiatric facility about twenty miles from town and about a thousand miles from forgiveness.

The Aurora Heights Psychiatric Center.

For four months, Rayne had not screamed or wept or spoken a single word. She had not eaten on her own, flinched when touched, or looked anyone in the eye. She sat in a chair with her body like a marionette half-slung on its strings, eyes wide open and always looking somewhere no one else could follow.