Chapter 4
The other two men had roused by the time Ben and Iris had finished their breakfast, and Alex stretched as he sauntered into the kitchen, his hair going in every direction.
“Alrighty, who’s ready to check into the loony bin?” he asked, rubbing his hands together and grinning. “We’ve got full access from three to three.”
“Don’t call it that,” Iris chided. “That perpetuates stigma against the mentally ill. God knows we don’t need more of that. This is meant to be 2010, right? Let’s keep up with the times.” She took a drink from her mug of tea, but kept her eyes on Alex in a judging glare.
“Sorry, sorry,” Alex said defensively.
Ben nodded his agreement with Iris. “Excellent point,” he said, exchanging a smile with her across the table. “We really should treat this with the respect it deserves. People suffered in that place. You did the research, didn’t you? What kinds of things went on there?”
“Oh, it was pretty bad,” he said. “But you know what mental health treatment was like in the dark ages. Lobotomies, neglect, restraints, electro shock, drug experimentation. People who went there often got worse, not better. Stuck in squalor, abused by the staff. Just not a way to become healthy.”
“And what kind of apparitions can we not expect to see?” Joey asked as he wandered into the room, towelling off wet hair.
“There’s a ghost people call Bob that likes to pull people’s hair in the mess hall,” Alex explained, “And one called Gertrude that stares out from the windows of the common room, with wild hair and a hospital gown.”
And as he named a few more ghosts and their modus operandi, Ben glanced at Iris, who was looking quietly into her tea.
She hadn’t been the same this morning. More quiet, reserved. Cautious. How much had her apparent experience with Addison shaken her?
“You okay?” he asked in a low voice.
“Hmm?” she looked up, surprised. “Oh. Yeah, don’t worry about me. How are you doing… Greg?” She spoke the name slowly, with an almost imperceptible narrowing of her eyes that cleared a split second later.
Ben felt his grip tighten around his mug of coffee.
She’s not… on to me somehow?
“Me? I’m great. Why wouldn’t I be?” he said with a nonchalant wave of his hand.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You seem nervous.”
“Funny, I was just thinking that of you,” Ben countered.
“Well, it’s natural to be nervous when you’re about to go to a haunted old asylum, I guess,” Iris said. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had kind of a bad feeling about it.”
Ben felt like the two of them were dancing around something. If only he knew what.
“You too, huh?” he said finally, after taking a moment to weigh up whether or not to voice his concerns about the staircase before even seeing it. But, if Iris had bad vibes too, maybe he could use that to his advantage. “I think we should do a thorough safety check before it gets dark.”
“Oh, I agree completely,” Iris said, and chuckled. “We seem to be on the same page a lot, don’t we?”
“If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have got married, right?”
“Y-yeah. Guess not.” There was the doubt in her eyes again.
* * *
Addison leaned a hip against Ian’s workstation and folded her arms. “Ian, you know drugs, right?”
Ian looked from their monitor to Addison with a raised eyebrow. “Come again?”
“You’ve been around a bong or two in your time.”
Ian became uncomfortable. “Well, you know, recreational cannabis use has been legal in the state of California since 2016, and I can’t be held criminally or professionally responsible for what I do in my—”
“Oh, relax!” Addison laughed. “I have a crackpot theory and I want your input. Okay, more emphasis on the ‘pot’ and less on the ‘crack.’”
Ian loosened their grip on the table. “Okay… go on.”
“What if—and hear me out here—the pot made Iris able to sense me? I don’t know how, but…”
“Well, it’s not impossible,” Ian mused. “There are special circumstances where a hologram may be seen or sensed.”
They began working on their computer, bringing up files from the original generation project.
“We haven’t really had a chance to test it with the current gen systems, but Al was regularly seen by animals, children, and—” Ian hesitated, chuckling. “Not exactly kosher to call them ‘mentally absent’ these days, but that’s the term Al used at the time. So it’s not outside the realm of possibility that a mind-altering substance like THC might change someone’s awareness enough to sense—”
Ian paused, mouth open, as they read the file they had up.
“What was the name of that mental hospital Ben’s going to?”
“Havenwell Psychiatric Hospital, Pennsylvania… why?”
“Oh, now that’s spooky.”
“What is?”
Ian pointed to the screen. “Sam Beckett leaped into a patient there one time. That’s where Al figured out a lot of people there could see him.”
“Seriously?” Addison gawked at the screen, which had some old photographs of the inside of the place. “That is pretty weird.”
“Okay, screw this—I’m getting my cat ears.”
* * *
Ben took up his mug and wandered as casually as he could into the living room. Taking a drink, the coffee nearly came out his nose when he saw Addison standing like a statue in the corner. He gave her a puzzled look.
“I’m testing whether Iris notices me if I just stand still and don’t make a noise,” she whispered. “So just… pretend I’m not here. Okay?”
Ben glanced back to the kitchen to make sure nobody was watching him, before leaning in to her. “Iris is acting super weird. You don’t think she also might be noticing her… husband… is different?”
“All the more reason to ignore me now,” Addison said. “Just play it cool, okay? As long as she doesn’t come right out and say you’re a stranger…”
“I’ll try. I’m getting a weird feeling about this leap, though, and I don’t much like it.”
“We all are, honestly. We’re working under the theory that the pot Iris smoked may have altered her brain enough to sense me. Maybe once it wears off properly, she’ll go back to normal. Ziggy’s giving that a seventy-two percent probability.”
Ben nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense.”
“What does?” Joey asked, entering the room with his own steaming mug of coffee. He still looked half asleep.
Ben awkwardly turned away from Addison. “Oh, uh, it makes sense to conduct a thorough check of the structural integrity of any place we step while we’re in a derelict building,” he said, taking the opportunity to plant the seed into the camera man’s mind. “Safety first and all that.”
Joey considered this a moment, and nodded. “Yeah. Things could get hairy in the old dump.” He grinned. “Maybe we should make you health and safety officer of the production, huh?”
“Great idea.”
“Saves me reading all this dry-ass literature the studio gave me,” he said, reaching into one of his bags and pulling out a stack of stapled paper. He held it out to Ben. “All yours.”
Ben frowned. “Oh, great.”
“Thanks for volunteering, my man.” Joey winked.
Ben’s eyes flicked to Addison, who was holding back a laugh.
I guess the R&R portion of this leap is concluded.