I finally succumbed to the pull of my own reality. When my eyes opened, the world had reverted to what it was when I first drifted off.

While the room looked the same, my body felt like It had just put in eight hours of deadlifting. I had only felt this pain once in my life and it was when I was knee deep in the flu. This time around it felt like my muscles were being retrained on how to properly function.

As cool as this power was, I’d have to be careful with how often I used it. Especially If this was one of the side effects. I was learning that none of these powers came without sacrifice. Oh crap, would I get cancer from this? That would be a pretty horrific tradeoff.

Wait, Alex said he had cancer before he got this power, right? Ugh, I couldn’t remember. I sure hoped so. I needed to stop overreacting.

Either way, Hopefully the tradeoff wasn’t that intense. I wonder if the cancer is why Alex never mentioned the ability to walk the spirit world. It’s possible his body was too damaged to make the jump. I couldn’t imagine doing that on chemo.

A small beam of light came through a small gap in the blinds and landed directly on my face. I held my hand up to block its light.

Man, what time was it? My best guess was it had to be somewhere between 6 and 7 in the morning. I never opened my blinds at home, so I honestly didn’t know what 6 a.m. looked like.

That’s when I noticed something strange. There wasn’t a clock in the room. Huh. I had not realized that before. It seemed odd, but then again, there were a lot of odd rules and regulations inside Cottonwood.

This wouldn’t have even cracked the top 10, especially when you considered just how bare bones this room was. It was reminiscent of the dorm I visited around a month back on a college tour.

It was just a large room with 4 twin size beds with rails on the sides, 4 nightstands with two spots for clothes, and a single window in the corner that appeared to be glued shut.

There was one difference between this room and the ones from the college tour. Everything in this room was rounded, from the bed frame to the desk.

This room also lacked a private bathroom like Josiah's room had. After seeing Dr. Klanderman crawl out of the bathroom last night, not having one felt like a blessing in disguise.

After thinking it over, the lack of clock wasn’t that surprising with how bare bones the place was.

Regardless of the time, it was still early enough for both of my roommates to still be asleep. At least my late night antics hadn’t disrupted them.

They lay motionless in their beds, breathing slow and steady. That was a relief. They were nice enough guys, but not without their quirks.

That was especially true for Corey, who for some reason only spoke in quotes from movies or television. He was especially fond of the Will Farrel movie Kicking and Screaming.

The first time we met, he looked at me and said, “Where do I know you from?” I told him we were roommates. He shook his head and replied, “No, that’s not it. I’ll figure it out.” It was hilarious the first time. By the fifth time? Not so much.

The other guy, Isaac, was a different story. I had no clue why he was here, and to be honest, I wasn’t about to ask. I did hear from one of the other patients that he was from some war torn country. That tracked. There was something in his eyes that told me I couldn't mentally understand his story.

Something new in the room caught my attention. What was it? It sat on my nightstand like a present just waiting for me to find it on Christmas day. I rubbed the gunk out of my eyes, trying to make sense of it.

Holy crap.

Alex was right.

In one of his videos, he said if you tried to get rid of the laptop, it would find its way back to you. And there it was. It sat on the nightstand like it had been there the whole time. This wasn’t just weird; it broke all the rules. Physics, time, logic—you name it. It shouldn’t have been possible.

How did it get here? I glanced around the room, half-expecting to find some clue. There was no way it could’ve just waltzed in here without someone noticing. There were cameras by the doors. With that plus the windows glued shut there was only one real option, the laptop had materialized out of thin air.

With Corey and Isaac still out cold, I slid out of bed. I quietly pulled the laptop toward me. I had to be discreet.

Electronics definitely were not allowed in the building. This was a giant risk, but it was a calculated one. I had to see if there was anything on here that could help.

I pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life, and sure enough, the battery was at 100%. Of course it was. That was one more thing to add to the growing pile of bizarre, reality bending features that came with this laptop.

The videos were tempting, but there was no way I could watch them now. This was already risky. Adding audio would be downright insane.

Instead, I pulled up the readme file Alex had mentioned. It was a file full of scans of written notes. He mentioned this was a book at one point in time. This must have come from the previous ghost seers.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

It was page after page of little notes, scribbles, and ideas. It looks like it went back at least to the late 1800’s, but some of the notes lacked a date, so it was impossible to know for sure.

That’s when I stumbled across a note that stopped in my tracks.

> "The closer I feel to the spirits, the closer I feel to death."

>

> Isabella, 1929.

Come the fuck on, Isabella! That was it? That was all you could give me? How was that supposed to help anyone? My cheeks burned red with annoyance.

I forced myself to keep reading. There had to be something more useful in here than Isabella’s cryptic, morbid fortune-cookie wisdom.

Page after page of these notes, and one thing became clear: the names tied to these messages, didn’t last long. It felt like a new name appeared every five years or so.

That was less than ideal for me, to say the least. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the ability to quit. Or at least I wasn’t aware of one. I decided to park that worry for now. I only had so much time with this laptop. The boys would be up any minute.

Eventually, I found something that actually made sense. Something that I could work with.

> "Sometimes, in order to communicate with the spirits, you must first remind them of who they were before their deaths. Minds can get lost in the void."

>

> Marcellus, 1978.

Now that was more like it. Something useful. Maybe these ghosts had spent so long trapped in the void—or, hell, maybe just in this building—that they’d forgotten who they were.

That could explain why they were so scattered and hard to reach. If I could somehow remind them of who they were in life, maybe they’d talk. Maybe I’d finally get some answers.

But, of course, that raised another problem. How was I supposed to remind them? It wasn’t like I had their high school yearbooks lying around. And even if I figured that part out, I still had no clue how to force them to talk. Maybe Marcellus mentioned that in more detail somewhere else in his notes.

I was about to dive deeper, when movement in the corner of the room caught my eye. Corey had started to wake.

Shit. My time was up.

I slammed the laptop shut and shoved it between the mattress and the bed frame. My heart pounded. The last thing I needed was for Corey to catch me with it.

But at least now I had something. A plan. A way forward. I just had to figure out how to remind one of these spirits of who they were. Maybe then I could actually start making some sense out of this mess.

###

I figured the best place to start was the common room. Maybe there I could find something useful, or learn something from one of the other patients that would help me in my quest.

The room was pretty light so far. Three people, in sweats, sat at the far corner, heads down, shuffling cards. I recognized the game right away—Kings in the Corner. My great grandma used to play it with me when I was little.

Another 2 patients, these ones in their familiar blue scrubs, sat on a couch over by me in front of a small television. Their nurse sat on the far end of the room talking with another nurse. They had a ghost watching next to them.

The television was one of the few electronics the patients got to enjoy during their stay. It looked like "The Price is Right” was on.

Seeing the show gave me some fond memories of my childhood. Whenever I was sick as a kid, my mom would get me a sprite and put on the show.

Maybe the show would help the spirits remember like it did for me?

I wheeled over to the ghost, “I’m here to help,” I whispered. I leaned toward him. “You can talk to me.”

Nothing. His eyes stayed glued to the game show. Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. Nothings ever that simple.

Josiah walked into the room. Unlike last time, his gaze stayed to the floor as he walked to the other end of the room to an empty table full of paper and markers. His nurse joined the other two nurses.

It was probably best I stayed away for now. The last thing I wanted was another incident like yesterday.

I watched the TV with the others for around 10 minutes. I had no idea how to get them to talk to me. Finally, a familiar game came on the screen. I just went for it.

I leaned over to them, “Oh man, Palinko. I love this game, what’s your favorite?”

Nothing. Not even a glance my way. The screen had them in a trance. Courtney wasn’t kidding about the elopers—they didn’t talk, at least not to me.

I sighed and started to wheel toward the card players. They'd probably be my best bet for some answers.

Wait what was that? Something stopped me in my tracks. Josiah had dropped a drawing on the floor. It was hard to make out, but there was something about it that looked familiar. As I wheeled closer, the lines began to take shape.

My heart skipped a beat.

The drawing. It looked just like the guy! The one from the Walmart parking lot. Leather jacket, Broncos cap, and the scar on his cheek. It was all there! Josiah was no artist, but there was no doubt in my mind, that was the civic man.

How did Josiah know about him? How could he have drawn him so perfectly? Did he have powers too? Hold on, he's dead. Right?

I looked back at the nurses, they seemed distracted by whatever juicy gossip the larger woman with the 80’s perm hairstyle had to share. I reached down and slid the picture under my shirt.

I surveyed the area. It was highly unlikely the paper just casually fell this far from his table. No, this wasn’t an accident. I was sure he wanted me to see it.

As I passed by his table, I whispered just loud enough for him to hear, “I’m listening. I’ll help you take care of those monsters. But I’ll need your help.”

He paused his drawing. It was subtle, but deliberate enough that I knew he understood.

So what did Civic man have to do with this place? It felt like I had more pieces of the puzzle, but I still lacked a critical piece of information. I had to dig deeper.