The Purgatorium Read Online Free PDF Page A

shrugged. “I don’t intend to stay and find out.”
    They reached her unit.
    “You just got here and made my trip one hundred percent better. I hate to see you leave.”
    Daphne blushed. “That’s sweet.” Maybe she just needed to draw a line for Cam. “Thanks. Maybe if I talk to Cam and the doctor...”
    “There you go.”
    She unlocked her door. “Well, good night.”
    “Good night.”
    Daphne turned on the television, still shaken from the elevator. She reminded herself that she wasn’t afraid of death. It was the pain she feared, and Cam wouldn’t put her in any real pain or danger. She changed into her night shirt and hung up her clothes. She was folding the sheet back on the bed when the doorbell rang.
    She peeked through the window to see who was there, but the window didn’t give her a full view.
    “Who is it?” she asked. When there was no reply, she asked again.
    The doorbell rang.
    “Cam?” She returned to the window and this time was met by a strange, ghostly face looking back at her. “Ahh!” Daphne jumped back.
    A young woman with two long braids and skin white as a ghost and blood-red eyes looked in at her. Daphne didn’t know what to think or what to do, muttering, “What in the hell is going on?” Once she recovered from the shock, since she didn’t believe in ghosts, and since she was pissed and wasn’t about to let on they had gotten to her with the elevator, she waved.
    She was about to say, “How do you do?” with amusement when the door to her unit opened, and the ghastly figure stood in the doorway.
    Daphne froze. Hadn’t she locked the door?
    The girl was covered in white powder and had bizarre red eyes. Red stuff dripped from them and from her blue lips. She wore a short black dress, torn in places.
    “Are you one of the living or the dead?” The ghost carried an enormous shotgun.
    “What?”
    Before Daphne could react, the ghost girl pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. A spray of fine white powder shot out. Daphne closed her eyes to keep the powder from getting into them as the ghost girl ran out.
    Daphne rushed to the door and closed it, locked it, and leaned her back against it just in case.
    The ghost girl put her face to the window and screamed, “You are one of the dead! You hear me, Daphne Janus? You are not living! You are one of the dead!”
    Daphne pulled at the curtain to block out the hideous face, but soon there were other faces, equally gruesome, peering in at her. Together they said, “You are not living! You are one of the dead!” The curtain panels wouldn’t close over the entire window.  There was a three-inch gap between them through which Daphne could still see the white faces and the red eyes and blue lips dripping with blood—fake blood, she reminded herself.
    “You are not living! You are one of the dead!”
    Daphne ran into the bathroom and closed the door. She stood there, shaking. What in the world had just happened? She looked at herself in the mirror. Baby powder. She was covered in baby powder. She might have laughed if she weren’t so upset. In the bathroom, she used her towel to wipe herself clean. Then she poked her head through the bathroom door. The faces at the window were gone.
    She checked the lock on the door and dragged one of the striped chairs in front of it, just to be sure. Then she phoned Cam, ready to give him an earful, ready to demand he take her home on the first boat, but he didn’t answer, so she called the courtesy desk to leave messages for him and for Hortense Gray.
    She turned on the television for a while, too keyed up for sleep. She waited for Cam for over an hour, checking the window now and then for those horrible faces. She took out her journal and tried to write, but nothing came to her. She just doodled all over the back of one page, making circles, then caterpillars, then leaves. At ten o’clock, she called Cam’s room, but there was still no answer.
    At some point, with the TV on, as she allowed