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at the bush, tearing off a branch. The ghost with the shave-topped head groped at me again.
     
    “What the fuck do you want?” I said, swinging the branch like a baseball bat. It passed right through his hand. “Talk to me, you stupid fuck.”
     
    A second head coalesced. It was mutilated like the first, but its scalp flapped from the side of its skull like a bad toupee. Another hand reached out of the bush toward me, and another.
     
    “Stop it,” I yelled, swatting the bush with the branch I’d torn off. Another mutilated head appeared, and another. They weren’t exact copies of each other, either. Like a bunch of different, unrelated guys got clipped by a ceiling fan on a rampage.
     
    Another pair of hands sprouted out, and another, and something cold and psychically slimy trailed over my wrist where a spectral hand touched me.
     
    I whirled away and ran toward the river, the branch still in my hand. I was screaming, but I didn’t give a fuck. I barreled into the guardrail, which clipped me right at hip level, and flung the branch into the rushing water.
     
    “Aaaaaaghhh!”
     
    And then I threw up.
     

Chapter Four
     
    I think if I were anyone else, they would’ve taken me to the hospital. But...think about it. A guy who sees dead people, and a hospital where people are dropping like flies. Bad combination.
     
    There’s a special clinic in the near north suburbs where I fill out inane psychological tests every four months to see if I’m crazy yet and get my prescriptions. It’s a low, blond-brick building, constructed ten years ago at the end of a residential street. There’s no signage on the building, so I’ve always just referred to it as “The Clinic.”   And no one had ever died there. Not yet, anyway.
     
    After my freak-out and apparent collapse, Roger called Warwick, who rushed over in person to take me to The Clinic.
     
    There was a Paranormal Psychiatrist on staff who I’d been seeing so long that he called me, “Mister Bayne,” instead of, “Detective.” Doctor Morganstern, man of a thousand sweater vests. He was the one who’d gotten me into the Auracel trials a year before the FDA gave the drug a stamp of approval. I wondered if he had any fun new drugs that would help me hold it together.
     
    A nurse drew a couple vials of blood, took my vitals, and ran through my physical symptoms without going into my psychic experience. I’ve always gotten the impression I was only to discuss those things with Morganstern.
     
    I lay back in a comfy bed, in a room that looked more like a very small hotel suite than a hospital room. The bedspread and curtains were done in a muted floral pattern, and there were a couple of live plants on the dark wood nighstand. I peeked into a cabinet expecting to find a television, but the cabinet was empty. No big deal. If there were a set, it probably would’ve had cable, and so my static station would’ve been playing all-day soap operas.
     
    There was a brief knock on the door and a woman in her early thirties let herself in. She was slim and pretty, with ash blonde hair cut short and just a little spiky, with glasses so delicate I could’ve crushed them in the palm of my hand. She wore a boxy sweater over brown corduroys. “Hello,” she said, glancing down at a clipboard she carried and then back at me. “I’m Doctor Jennifer Chance.”
     
    Oh, God. I had a big breakdown in a public park and I had to deal with some doctor I’d never even met? Great, just great. “Is Doctor Morganstern around? Did you page him? Not that there’s anything wrong with you -- I just want to talk to Doctor Morganstern.”
     
    “I’m sorry,” Doctor Chance said. I thought I could detect some genuine sympathy there. “Doctor Morganstern is in Japan.”
     
    “Oh,” I said. And that seemed to be all there was to say about it. I wanted to argue with her, to try to put off doing anything until Morganstern was back, but I wasn’t sure my problem, whatever it