Chapter Text
God, I hope I haven’t made a huge mistake, Katherine thought as she followed the hospital director down the hall. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice to go back, though- the ink had barely dried on the divorce papers, the house had been sold, they’d filled her position at her old job. Not that she even cared much about her old job, she just needed the stability to counteract Ron’s poor choices.
“Don’t feel bad if you get lost in your first week or two here, it happens to everyone,” the director said.
Katherine tugged on the hem of her blazer, trying to bring her thoughts back down to earth. “Yeah, this is…a pretty unusual building.”
“It was actually a hotel at one point, believe it or not,” the director said. “Changed hands multiple times over the years, but it was turned into a hospital around ten years ago, I think? Of course, it was an asylum long before that, but we don’t use that term anymore.” He led Katherine down a broad hallway carpeted in a red-patterned rug that must have been plush and beautiful years ago but was worn down to threads in spots. “It can be a bit…much for some people, but you’ll get used to it after a while.”
“A bit much?” Katherine echoed.
“So this is one of our primary clinic spaces,” the director continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. He pushed a door open and ushered her in. “Here, we’ll take a quick look around.”
Katherine followed him. Oh, I’m definitely going to get lost in this building, she thought. The space was massive and still more like a hotel than a hospital. It didn’t remind her at all of the hospitals and clinics she’d studied and worked in- although, in all fairness, that had been at least ten years ago. She had gone back to school when Ben was a baby, and had barely gotten her license when she found out she was pregnant with Esther. Ron had pressured her into getting a job closer to home and the kids’ daycare, promising that he’d find a job that would let her get back into her field. She should have known that would never happen.
“So…what sort of schedule should I anticipate?” she asked, trying to redirect her thoughts.
“There’s group therapy in the mornings and individual sessions in the afternoons,” the director said. “The number will vary based on how many inpatient admissions we currently have, I’ll send you an updated list. It’ll be-“
A high pitched shriek echoed in the hall; Katherine’s eyes flicked towards the sound. The director followed her gaze. “Of course…we do have some long term patients here,” he said.
The door banged open and a nurse in a white lab coat staggered in, dragging a small boy by the arm. “Unhand me!” he shrieked. “You will not steal my blood!”
The director sighed heavily. “Come on, Abaddon, you should know the drill by now,” he said. “We’re not stealing your blood, remember? We’re just taking a little of it to test.”
“He’s being especially feisty today, Dr. Bateman,” the nurse grunted as she hoisted the boy onto an examination table despite his protests.
“Stop kicking, Abaddon, it’ll be over faster if you don’t fight,” Dr. Bateman said.
Abaddon squirmed as the nurse briskly wrapped the rubber tourniquet around his upper arm. His arms were pale and skinny, marked in repeated narrow lines- some faded and white, some pink and shiny. “Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity," he grumbled, kicking his heels against the bed. “Has not the Lord Almighty- ow!”
“Oh, it doesn’t hurt,” the nurse said. “Hold still.”
Dr. Bateman cleared his throat. “So as I was saying, your patient schedule will most likely change on a day to day basis-“
Katherine was only half listening. She was watching the child, how tense his narrow shoulders were as the nurse filled the vial with blood, how his free hand gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white, how wide and glazed over his eyes were, shadowed in dark circles. He’s so young, she thought. How’d he end up here?
“…office set up, it’ll be your own private space so you don’t have to worry about-“
“Hey, I think he might pass out,” Katherine interrupted.
“He’s fine, he just has a flair for the dramatic,” the nurse said. “Almost done.”
Abaddon’s face had gone paper white, his death grip on the table loosening. “No, really, he’s-“ Katherine started to say, and then his eyes rolled back and he slumped forward.
Without thinking she darted forward and caught him against her shoulder. “Oh, Jesus,” the nurse sighed as she quickly disengaged the tube. “Give me just a second.”
Katherine held the child against her, gently rubbing his back as the nurse slapped a cotton ball and a bandaid on his arm. “Do you have an ice pack?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s unnecessary, he’ll be fine-“
She ignored them both, grabbing a couple of paper thin pillows and shifting the boy around until he was lying down with his legs propped up. The nurse reluctantly pressed an ice pack into her hand and she draped it over his forehead.
Slowly his eyes flickered open, staring hazily at the ceiling. “Hey, kiddo, y’okay?” she said. He blinked, his mouth tugging down in a confused frown. “You passed out for a second, but you’re all right.”
The director checked his watch. “We should probably keep on with the tour,” he said. “Shall we continue?”
Her hand lingered on Abaddon’s; she could feel every bone in his thin fingers. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” she said. His eyes were drifting closed again, and she patted his hand lightly before following the director out of the clinic.
“So down the hall is-“
“He seems really young to be here,” Katherine interrupted.
Dr. Bateman blinked. “Abaddon?” he said. “Oh, yes, I suppose he is. Eight, I think, perhaps nine. Maybe ten. We’re not sure, there’s no record of his birth and he doesn’t know his birthday.”
“How does he not know his own birthday?”
He chuckled. “He doesn’t even know his last name,” he said. “Abaddon was part of the cult down in Ward’s Hill. The Hand of God, I believed they called themselves? We took quite a few of the members after they were taken down. Unfortunately, Abaddon is neither well enough to be discharged nor has any family who could take him.” He unlocked a door and held it open for her. “After you. Now, this isn’t an area we access often, but as you can see-“
Katherine did her best to focus, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the child slumped unconscious against her shoulder. She’d been prepared to have some younger patients, but she was thinking more in the late teens range. Not a kid younger than her own children.
By the time her first day ended her thoughts were a tangled mess. It was so much information, on top of knowing there was no way she could be able to find her way through the maze of hallways in the old hotel-turned-hospital, and it didn’t help that every time her mind wandered she went right back to the little boy passing out on the examination table.
She headed out to the parking lot, her steps heavy, and found her brother waiting for her by her light blue hatchback. “Kath! How was your first day?” Nathan said, brightening immediately.
“Exhausting,” she said. “This place is-“
“A lot, yeah, I know, but you’ll settle in just fine,” Nathan said.
Katherine unlocked the car and sank down in the driver’s seat. “I don’t know, I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew,” she admitted. “I haven’t done this in years.”
“But, if you notice, they didn’t even question the gaps in your resume,” Nathan pointed out.
“Because I’m experienced and qualified, even after taking time away?”
“Well, yes, and also because the hauntings contribute to a very high turnover rate and they’re desperate for applicants.”
Katherine rolled her eyes as she started the car. “This place is not haunted, Nathan, it’s just old and creepy.”
“And haunted,” he corrected. “There’s a lot of weird things about this town. I’ve heard some wild stories about the Undervale when it used to be a hotel. And then there was that whole cult thing, now that was crazy.”
“You have first hand experience,” Katherine mumbled under her breath.
“Hey, just because I’ve been in a cult before doesn’t mean I was as off-the-wall as the Hand of God people!” Nathan protested.
“You’ve been in three cults.”
“Four, if you count my week and a half in Scientology before they kicked me out.”
Katherine blew out a long, slow breath. “Speaking of the cult-“
“Which one?”
“Hand of God,” she said. “I saw one of the patients, a little boy. Dr. Bateman said he came from there.”
Nathan frowned. “Oh, yeah, Abaddon,” he said. “I don’t know much about him. I’ve heard he’s a terror though. He thinks he’s a demon or something.” He chuckled and punched Katherine’s upper arm lightly. “You’ll definitely have your hands full with that one!”
“Great,” she sighed.
“Come on, Abaddon. You know the drill.”
He did know the drill. Nurses and orderlies came and went, the combination of medications in his little plastic cups varied, he’d moved rooms a few times, but the schedule never changed. Everything he’d been the same since he was little and the police barged into the compound and took him away.
At the moment there were five different pills in his cup. He didn’t have the energy to put up his usual fight, not after blacking out during routine bloodwork, but he grimaced and coughed as the nurse (what was her name? she was the third one this month and he’d already forgotten) stared him down while he forced them down his throat.
He tried to avoid brushing his teeth, but found himself shuffled into the bathroom; the nurse kept staring daggers as he begrudgingly scraped the toothbrush around his mouth. The gritty texture of the paste and the taste of the cheap artificial mint made his skin crawl.
“All right, back to your room. Go on.”
He hated his room, blank beige walls and icy tile floor and sickly pea-green bedsheets, but at least there was a window, too high for him to see well but enough to let in a little light. He climbed into his bed and laid on his back, hands folded over his stomach, straining to catch a glimpse of the moon while he listened to the bustle of the hallway settle down for the night.
Of course, he didn’t need to sleep. Demons didn’t sleep.
He could feel it under his skin, coursing in his veins. The evil saturated his being, soul deep, rotting him from within. Sometimes when it was quiet enough, when his thoughts left him alone, he thought he could hear it, his “true form” as Father James called it, struggling to break out.
His nails were clipped to the quick, painful and ragged, but he tried anyways, digging at the fragile skin of his inner arms, imagining his small fingers were his talons instead, quicksilver sharp and unforgiving.
“Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse and small in the darkness. “Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils.”
He’d never learned to read, demons didn’t merit the effort, but Father James had drilled his head full of scripture, a constant ebb and flow of repetition, and it had never left him. His broken fingernails scratched at his arms as he stared up at the ceiling, reciting quietly to himself.
“Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?”
It didn’t matter that the doctors had tried for years to convince him that he wasn’t a demon, that they had pumped him full of medications and made him sit through arduous talk therapy and claimed that demons weren’t real. Of course he was real. And someday he would complete the process that Father James had started, and he would shed his skin and emerge as the horror he truly was.
“For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give thanks?”
But even though he was an unforgivable evil, he was trapped in the body of a child, and his vessel drifted off to sleep, weary and worried, the words of scripture fading from his lips. And just like always, he dreamed of horrible things, terrifying visions that frightened him awake. In those moments he felt more like a little boy than an ancient demon, and he huddled under the thin scratchy sheets, feeling his heart thud in his chest until he was dizzy and nauseous. He couldn’t go back to sleep, he shouldn’t go back to sleep, so instead he knelt beside his bed, hands clasped, mumbling prayers until his knees went numb and the sliver of window above his head started to show the dawn and the rest of the ward began to wake up along with him.