Diane was gone. She could process it, accept it, and yet… Autumn couldn’t really understand it. Had the shadows been what killed her? Was Other Ashdown sapping the life of the sick and elderly now? She slept fitfully, visions of the man made of coal and shadowy bugs dancing in and out of her subconscious. Pax seemed to believe she had a larger role in this- that she was going to make a difference- but did she? Did she really, in the end? She’d let someone die. The metaphorical blood was on her hands.

Oh, thank god there was no real blood. Autumn would’ve ******** lost it. It was easier to deal with peaceful, pretty dead people. It was three quarters of why she could’ve never been a doctor. Blood and guts, except that shown in horror movies, was beyond her.

Physically, she was getting better. Day by day the breathing was easier, the sleeping was easier. Living with herself… not so much. Was there something more she could’ve done? Had Diane known about Ashdown, known about the strangeness that lurked within its shadows? Perhaps she had. Perhaps, if Autumn had been braver and said something, she would’ve had answers.

All things that would stay with her forever, she guessed.

She walked more. Tried to talk to more of the other patients kept up in these well-painted cells. Some of them were dying, some of them were already dead. It was in their eyes, the way they carried themselves.

Autumn ******** hated hospitals.

She met a woman with cancer. Stage four, not looking too hot. She was in and out of the ICU more regularly than the rest of them, trying new treatments. Trying anything. Just willing herself to stay alive but whatever means she could. When Autumn looked at her, there they were again.

Crawling, writhing shadows.

She was going to die.

One afternoon, her blanket fell. Just a simple thing, but Autumn remembered from TV… there was something that cancer patients got cold? So of course she got up and went over. It wasn’t even a bragging thing, it was just a fact- Autumn was faring better than the woman. And if she took a moment to try to (frantically, desperately) shoo some of the black shadows away, begged and pleaded internally for them to disappear, to just give this poor soul another day.

Well. That was her business and her business alone.

She hadn’t meant to get attached to Lenore, not really. Autumn knew what was coming. And yet, she looked at the pictures of Lenore’s grandchildren. Laughed at her stories of when she had been a model in her youth. She had lived, oh how she had lived! It was incredible! And every time, under the guise of something on her shoulders or something on her scarf, she would try to shoo away the clinging shadows that seemed to gather more incessantly.

It did not surprise her, then, when Lenore passed. Peacefully, thank god, but passed nonetheless. Another funeral to attend, another life she hadn’t saved.

She needed to get out of this damn hospital, and soon.

But then there was a gentleman. Heart disease, older man. Been through three surgeries, cancer twice, and was still kicking. War veteran to boot.

Just saying, the man had clearly seen some s**t.

So she talked to him. Got to know him, got to see when his kids stopped by. Sweet family, the lot of them. It dug in worse and worse to Autumn’s heart, with the fear of the shadows.

Was this really her punishment? Maybe the burnt lungs hadn’t been the intent at all. Maybe it was meeting all of these people, seeing how they were going to die.

Maybe it was a reminder of how small she really was

Rosalinde had gone back home with Zac, in need of food, and god bless Jeremiah for taking care of her. Only Autumn had no flowers to grind, no potions to make. Nothing she could say or do but pray, as hard as she could, for the shadows not to get the man.

When they arrived, she died just a little more. This was going to be the death of her, Autumn thought as she sobbed that night. She just knew it.

She tried again to scare them away. Dusted off his shoulders, offered to the nurses to walk him around so she might try something- anything- to chase away the shadows. Just one more time. One more time, and she’d take it as her sign.

And then he was gone.

But thank god, thank god he wasn’t dead. Autumn didn’t know how- the little shadowy beasts still clung to him, swum in her vision when she saw him. But he wasn’t dead. Just discharged, with the promise they needed to keep in touch.

It was a relief Autumn had not known she needed.

And yet…. And yet. It was always the and yet that needled at the back of her mind. Why had the first two died, and Bob lived? She didn’t understand. Part of her desperately, so very desperately, did not want to understand. Wanted to turn a blind eye to it all, and live as peacefully and willfully ignorant as she could.

And yet, Autumn couldn’t turn a blind eye.

She was going to have to visit the hospital on the other side.