Ellery was silent for a long time after I’d finished, the heels of her boots drumming against the concrete edge of the roof. Then she said, “So I might as well live?”
I tried to mimic her shrug. “Might as well.”
And for the second time that day, she laughed her rough and throaty laugh and I felt…okay. I felt I’d done okay.
Her phone buzzed and she wriggled it out of…somewhere…with a carelessness that nobody sitting on the edge of a building should exhibit. The briefest glance at the screen and then, “Okay. Time to go.”
I had no idea how late it was. Maybe ten? Maybe midnight.
“Go where?” I must have been getting old because bed was seeming like a really good idea right now.
Her eyes glittered like the city. “You’ll see.”
Chapter 23
We took a cab to Euston Station and then made our way down a rather gloomy stretch of road. I couldn’t help glancing around nervously—it seemed like the London you might see on an episode of Crime Watch—but we weren’t mugged or murdered.
So…yay.
We came to a corner marked by this derelict Victorian building, its turrets and balconies and crumbling grandeur more than a little bit out of place on the Hampstead Road. A plaque on the wall, between the boarded windows, proclaimed the place LONDON TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL, ERECTED BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS IN HUMBLE DEPENDENCE UPON THE BLESSING OF GOD, FOR THE TREATMENT OF MEDICAL AND SURGICAL CASES WITHOUT THE USE OF ALCOHOL.
Good grief. From what I knew of Victorian medicine, practicing it on the sober was practically an abuse of human rights.
“Arden.” Ellery gestured impatiently at me from the other side of yet another barrier. “Come on.”
I slipped under it and into an overgrown car park leading to what looked like a garden…oh wait, no, a graveyard behind the hospital.
The abandoned hospital.
The abandoned Gothic hospital.
With its own graveyard.
That we were visiting in the middle of the night.
Holy shit, we were going to die.
“I’m not sure—”
“I said come on.”
Ellery pulled herself over the fence in a flurry of fishnets and boy shorts and, after a moment, I followed. Nearly impaling a bollock along the way and landing heavily on what was probably a dead person. A very-long-time-dead person six feet under the ground, but still.
London Temperance Hospital cast spiky shadows across the ground, the hazy moonlight making the edges of the broken windows glint like teeth.
Tl;dr: I wasn’t happy.
But then, there hadn’t exactly been opportunity for this kind of thing up in Kinlochbervie. There were plenty of deserted crofters cottages and moors over which ghosts could potentially roam wailing, but it was forty miles just to get to school. Inviting a friend round for tea and a spot of breaking and entering simply wasn’t practical. Assuming you had friends, which queer English kids generally weren’t over-endowed in. So I told myself this was an opportunity to experience a part of growing up hitherto denied to me and that I should embrace it—the fact I’d done pretty well without it thus far notwithstanding.
We climbed an iron fire escape to an open window and dropped down into a long corridor, all white walls and wood paneling, monochrome in the dusty moonlight. The place smelled of disuse and mold as we headed toward a staircase, which had been severely water damaged. I could hear a faint, warm thrum in the distance. Something that sounded—of all things—like a bassline. And increasing sharply in volume as we made our way through the debris-strewn corridors. I peered into the occasional side room as we passed them but they were empty and characterless. Nothing like the grand and Gothic exterior.
Should have been a relief, right?
Except somewhere between my concerns about being arrested by the police or killed by angry, Victorian ghosts, I’d become curious.
Also I could definitely hear music now. Loud, very loud music. Delirious and electric. And a genre I wasn’t cool enough to properly identify. Trance or techno or…God, maybe it was dubstep? Oh help. I was out of my depth.
We turned a corner and…yep. I was at a rave. An actual flashing lights, packed bodies, arms and glow sticks, OMG you’re all on MDMA rave.
