The staff quarters held warmth like a cupped hand holds water—precious and temporary. Maya unpacked her sweater into the narrow wardrobe, each folded piece an anchor against the vastness that pressed beyond the door, listening.
Dawn crept through windows streaked with the memory of winter storms. Maya dressed in the small mirror that reflected her face and something else—a flicker at the edge that vanished when she turned. She told herself it was tiredness, the particular exhaustion that comes from sleeping in a place that doesn't know your dreams yet.
The corridor clock chimed the hour with a sound more suited to churches than hospitals. She walked toward the ward, her footsteps joining the building's quiet percussion—pipes ticking behind walls, vents exhaling old air, the distant hum of fluorescents learning to warm.
Sarah waited in the therapy room with the careful stillness of someone who had learned not to startle easily. Dark hair cut precisely at her chin, hands folded in her lap like origami birds. When she spoke, she watched her fingers as if words were something that might burn if handled carelessly.
"I paint," she said, without preamble. "In my head. They won't let me have oils."
"Do you work in pencil?" Maya asked, settling into the chair across from her.
Sarah's mouth lifted and fell like a bird testing a branch. "Pencil can't hold the weight. It slides right through the paper."
"The weight of what?"
Sarah's gaze drifted past Maya's shoulder toward the corner where afternoon light pooled in shades of amber. "Her darkness," she whispered. "The woman who stands where walls meet. She's made of the spaces between colors. If you paint her right, she looks at you. If you look back..." Sarah's voice trailed into nothing.
Maya made notes, her pen scratching against paper with more volume than it should possess. "Do you see her now?"
Sarah tilted her head like a child listening for distant music. Her left hand rose to cover one ear. "She doesn't come when you ask. She comes when you remember something you were supposed to forget."
The radiator behind them clicked once, twice—then a third time that lasted a beat too long.
John arrived like weather changing—pacing the small room's perimeter with the restless energy of a caged thing. He spoke in spirals about bureaucrats and utility companies, forces of surveillance both mundane and magnificent. In textbooks, paranoid delusions felt clinical and manageable. Here, under Blackstone's coffered ceiling, they sounded less like madness and more like terrible clarity.
"They catalog your breathing," he said, stopping suddenly to stare at the cinderblock wall as if something behind it had shrugged. "Count your heartbeats. File them under your social security number." He pivoted toward Maya, eyes bright with the fever of certainty. "A girl like you should know better than to think you're not being measured."
"Measured for what?" Maya asked.
John smiled with pity so genuine it made her skin cool. "For the space you'll take up when you stop pretending you're still outside."
The overhead lights hummed in harmony now, a frequency that made her teeth ache. By the time she reached the corridor's far end, shadows pooled deeper than geometry allowed.
The final door bore no nameplate—only a number painted in black that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. The key turned with intimate precision, as if the lock had been waiting specifically for her hand.
Elijah sat on the floor with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, and forehead resting on folded arms. Prison-issue clothes hung loose on his frame. When the door opened, he lifted his head with the unhurried attention of a cat noticing movement.
"Good morning," Maya said, and the greeting felt like stepping off solid ground. "I'm Dr. Taylor."
"Doctor," he repeated, voice soft but traveling. His eyes were pale as winter water, reflecting the fluorescent light until they seemed to hold their own illumination. "You can call me Elijah."
"We'll move at whatever pace feels comfortable," she said, settling into the room's single chair. "Tell me what you'd like me to know."
He smiled with half his mouth. "That's not how this works," he said, and it sounded less like a threat than a gentle correction.
His skin held the translucent quality of those who rarely saw sun, blue veins mapping his temples like tributary rivers. His hands, when he moved them, left afterimages in the air—or perhaps her eyes were adjusting poorly to the room's peculiar light.
"Do you hear voices?" Maya asked because some questions belonged in the space between them like handrails belong beside stairs.
"Yes," he said, as simply as discussing the weather. "Mostly the dead. Sometimes the living, but the living are loud and obvious. The dead choose their words carefully. Maybe because they know how few they have left."
"Who are they?"
"They belong to this place," he said, head tilting as fluorescent light caught in his dark hair. "To the people who fed this place their breath and fears and small deaths. And sometimes"—his gaze found hers and held it—"they belong to you."
Maya's pen stopped moving. Through the wall, something settled with a sound like coins dropping. "To me?"
"Don't worry," he said with tender mockery. "They like you. They've been waiting."
The air in the room shifted pressure, the way it does before storms. Maya forced her voice to remain clinical. "I've read that you believe you have certain abilities. Can you describe them?"
"I don't believe," he said. "I observe. It's like being underwater—at first you think the shapes you see are distorted because water bends light. But once you've been under long enough, you learn the bending is what shows you truth."
"We can work with metaphor," Maya said carefully. "But we'll also need to distinguish between subjective experience and—"
"You think there's a clean line," Elijah interrupted, and his laughter was soft as summer rain. "That's the most beautiful thing about you."
She regained footing in familiar territory. "Do the voices ever instruct you to harm yourself or others?"
"No," he said. "They tell me to tell you to listen."
"Listen to what?"
"To the part of yourself that's always known the dark," he said, and warmth crept into his smile—not comfort, exactly, but recognition. "The part that doesn't mind it."
Maya stood because standing felt like decision, like choice. "We'll continue tomorrow. If you need anything before then—"
"I'll ask," he said. Then, conversationally, as she reached for the door: "Tell Alex I said hello."
She turned so quickly her heel squeaked against linoleum. "What did you say?"
Elijah folded his arms more comfortably, settling as if into furniture that existed only for him. "Tell him. He's worried you've come to the deep water without learning to swim."
The room tilted one degree. Maya gripped the door handle to keep from falling toward something that wasn't gravity. "That's not—you can't know—"
"Tell him," Elijah repeated gently.
She left without another word, closing the door with hands that trembled only after the latch clicked home. In the corridor, the lights flickered once—just once, like an eyelid closing and opening again. When they steadied, something pale moved at the periphery of her vision, flowing like fabric caught in a breeze that touched nothing else.
Maya touched the clipping in her pocket—Alex's careful handwriting, his final mystery—and wondered if some doors, once opened, could ever truly close again.
[END OF CHAPTER]