The spirit of 1924

26

Grayson was lost. He couldn't bring himself back. He was stuck, vulnerable and his mind wasn't his anymore.

Ivy's light was heavy as an anchor and had taken root inside of him, both mind and soul. It lingered in his body, flowing through his veins and intoxicating his blood.        

Ivy slid down to the floor so she was on eyelevel with Grayson. She looked at him, and slowly raised her hand to put it on his shoulder but stopped herself from doing it.

Grayson was shaking uncontrollable where he sat, but he didn't seem to notice. He was too caught up in the vision taking place before his eyes.     

"It–" Grayson suddenly said, catching Ivy off-guard.

"It hurts." 

"It doesn't have to hurt." Ivy replied, this time taking his hands in hers. Her eyes scanned the boy in front of her. It felt like he had haunted her for ever, spreading nothing but fear, and now; she only felt sorry for him even though he at any moment could turn back to the demon he was.      

A weird feeling pulsated through Ivy's body from her hands. It blended together with her blood and made its way through her body. It hurt slightly, and the pain tugged its way towards her heart. 

"Pain wants to be felt. What is pain if it isn't felt?" Grayson hissed quietly, and pulled one of his hand out of her grip and moved it up to his chest.

"Pain makes us feel alive. It proves that we are alive. But what is pain if you are already dead?" 

"I – I don't know." Ivy stuttered.

"I might not be able to take away you pain, but I might be able to ease it." 

"You can't!" Grayson exclaimed loudly and angrily, but then he lowered his voice again.

"I deserve to feel it anyway." 

"No one deserves to feel pain, Grayson." 

"I do, and you know that." He started to disappear. But before he was gone, he looked up at Ivy and revealed two half faded green eyes.  Time went by.

Days flew away like a leaf in the wind, and Harry was gone once again.

Ivy was left with her own thoughts and nightmares that grew more horrible, more detailed and darker every night.

Multiple nights had she woken up screaming and crying, and often she thought she saw someone standing by her window but there was never anyone there. 

The days seemed dark and grey even when the sun was shining outside the window.

Ivy's surroundings had become plain and pale, almost like there was a layer of dust everywhere, and there was something unknown growing inside of her.

Something dark. Something she was unaware of, but suffered from every day. It had anchored itself deep inside her soul, and now slowly spread through her as a disease. A lethal and incurable disease. 

Ivy jerked away ten past eleven ten days after her last encounter with Grayson.

Her hair was sticking to her sweaty skin and her eye were wide open.

From her heavy and uneven breathing, you could easily think she had been chased, which was correct.

Her heart was still pounding hard in her chest from running on cold, uneven ground through a pitch black darkness.      

Tiredness was still lingering in Ivy's body, but already knew that she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. She never could, no matter how tired she was.

So slowly she got up, seeing her own refection in the mirror across the room as she did. Her bare skin was pale, making veins visible.

Ivy sighed deeply before she headed to take a shower.      

Ivy left the house forty minutes later, tugging her jacket tightly around her body as she stepped out into the rain.

It didn't take long before Ivy's hair was sticking to her forehead and cheeks again, and her clothes were soaking wet. Slowly she started jogging towards the bus stop down the street.

She hadn't checked when the bus was leaving, so she could either get to wait a few minutes or half an hour for the next bus. 

Twenty minutes, that's how many minutes Faye sat outside in the rain before the bus came.

When the bus finally slowly down and stopped by the bus stop, Ivy was cold all the way into the bones and her body wouldn't stop shivering.

The bus driver gave her look when she stepped onto the bus, and she left a wet trail on the floor as she walked down the aisle before she sat down in an empty seat.      

Ivy got up from her seat as the bus slowed down by the hospital, the seat she had been sitting on had gotten a darker colour.

She hurried from the bus into the hospital building. People looked at her when she, with her soaked clothes, made her way through the white and boring corridors.

She could feel her heart beating in her cold body as blood flowed from atrium to ventricle.       Faye stopped outside a room, two beds were empty, but by the window was an elderly woman lying.

She was pale and skinny, her cheeks hallow. The woman's eyes were closed, and to Ivy she looked more dead than alive. Her life had already slipped away, leaving a shell waiting for the end.      

Ivy continued down the hallway, looking into the rooms she walked by but never stopped. She never stopped until the sound of crying reached her ears.

She crossed the corridor and carefully looked into a small room. There was only one bed in the room, and in it lied a boy around Ivy's age.

The boy's eyes were closed and the monitor next to his bed showed that his heart had stopped beating. He was a lot younger than the woman in the other room, but while she was still holding on, he was already gone.

A woman was sitting in a chair next to the bed, her hands covering her face, and a man stood behind her with a sad expression on his face as he tried to comfort the woman.

The boy's parents. A nurse, who stood on the other side of the bed, reached forward and turned off the monitor that fell silent.

The only audible sound in the room was now the mother's desperate cry as she looked at her dead son.      

Ivy swallowed hard as she turned away from the sight inside the hospital room. She slowly started heading down the corridor again, made a few turns, before she stopped outside a door.

A door that to her looked completely different than any other door in the hospital, even though it didn't.

It was just a plain white door, but inside lied a boy who she didn't really know but cared quite a bit for.

She let her hand rest on the extraordinary ordinary door handle for a while, breathing slowly, before she pushed it down and opened the door.

Her gaze was facing the floor as she went inside and closed the door behind her. 

"Hi Chase." Ivy said in a low voice before she turned around and looked towards the bed. She gasped. 

"Who are you?"