What She Left Behind

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  Shannon looked at Izzy. “Will you come hang out for a little while?” she said.

  Izzy shrugged. “Sure,” she said.

  “Great!” Shannon said, smiling. “Josh brought firecrackers. We’ll wait for you before we light them off!” She kissed Ethan and pulled him away, little clouds of sand flicking from the back of her flip-flops as she hurried toward the bonfire. Halfway there, she lifted her drink in the air and shouted, “Let’s paaaarty!”

  Fin and the guys went back to setting up their tents while Jackie and Kim set up chairs and blankets. Izzy knelt in the sand to help Alex with their tent.

  “What the hell was that all about?” she said in a low voice, so the others couldn’t hear.

  “I have no idea,” Alex said. “But you know that old saying, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer?”

  “You think that’s what she’s trying to do?” Izzy said.

  “Most definitely,” Alex said. “Which means you need to be extra careful.”

  “Me?” Izzy said. “Why?”

  “Because that, my naïve friend, was the first time she’s apologized to anyone. Ever. It just about killed her. She must be really threatened by you.”

  Izzy’s stomach dropped. She’d hoped Shannon’s apology was sincere, that she really was going to turn over a new leaf. Izzy should have known better. Nothing was ever that easy.

  By midnight, about half the seniors were passed out in the sand, in their tents, or sitting around discussing politics and religion, their voices loud, their words slurring. Alex, Izzy, Jackie, and about a dozen others, including Shannon and Ethan, were sitting on pieces of driftwood around the dying bonfire. Izzy poked the orange, pulsating embers with the end of a long stick, breaking charred bits and pieces off the burning logs while Alex and Fin had a heated debate about global warming. The night had gone better than Izzy had hoped. She’d actually relaxed and laughed; throwing firecrackers into the bonfire and watching some of the guys and girls play chicken in the lake. She was just getting ready to tell Alex that she was going back to the tent when Josh stood and lumbered around the bonfire toward her. She still marveled at his gigantic size and his tiny voice. He was the star linebacker on the football team and she couldn’t help chuckling when she thought about him cheering, “Go, team!” out on the field.

  “Hey, want some company?” he said, looking down at her. He was barefoot and shirtless, his broad chest covered with ginger-colored hair.

  Izzy swore under her breath. “Actually, I’m getting ready to turn in,” she said.

  He ignored her and folded his thick legs beneath him, like a giant bullfrog, perching himself beside her on the log. His hip touched hers and she scooted sideways.

  “So how do you like living on the beautiful shores of Seneca Lake?” he said. He sat on the driftwood with his arms resting on his knees, a beer bottle in one beefy, freckled hand.

  Izzy kept her eyes on the glowing embers. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sure things will be easier now that you and Shannon are friends.”

  She looked at him. His eyes were glazed and his face was crimson, flushed red from too much sun and alcohol. But he didn’t appear drunk. Izzy imagined he could drink a case of beer and never feel a thing. “Let’s hope so,” she said. “How long have you and Shannon been friends?”

  Josh’s brow creased, a quick flash of uncertainty passing over his features. Then the confusion was gone and he smiled. “Oh, she and I go way back,” he said. “We’ve been best friends since kindergarten. We used to kiss behind the piano.”

  “Does Ethan know you used to make out with his girlfriend?” Izzy said. It was a lame attempt at being funny, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then again, maybe she was just trying to find out more about Ethan and Shannon.

  Josh made a pshaw motion with one hand. “Ethan and me are buddies. He knows me and Shannon used to be best friends.”

  “Used to be?”

  Josh skewed his thick lips to one side, as if rethinking what he’d said. “She’s dating Ethan now. He’s her best friend. We’re still friends though.”

  “Oh,” Izzy said. Suddenly she felt Josh’s heavy arm on her shoulders. Her nostrils filled with the bitter odor of sweat and beer.

  “Maybe you and me can be best friends,” he said.

  “Um,” Izzy said. She shrugged his arm from her shoulders and stood. “I think I’m going to hit the hay.”

  Josh grabbed her arm, his giant hand like a warm, sweaty muff around her wrist. “Sit back down,” he said, tugging. “Can’t we just talk for a few minutes? Get to know each other a little better?”

  She pulled away. “Sorry,” she said. “But I’m tired and going to bed.”

  Just then, Dave stood, went over to the car, and turned off the stereo. “Hey, everybody!” he shouted, coming back to the dying fire. “It’s midnight! You know what that means!”

  Josh stood and pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!” he shouted. “Let’s do this!” A couple dozen other kids jumped to their feet, talking excitedly and grabbing flashlights and beer. On the other side of the dying fire, Ethan stood and tested his flashlight. Shannon and Crystal put on their hoodies and waited with excited smiles, legs wiggling in anticipation.

  “Let’s do what?” Izzy asked him.

  “We’re going to check out Willard State!” Josh said. He finished the rest of his beer and threw the bottle in the embers. “Come on! I brought some extra flashlights.”

  Izzy’s stomach started to churn. Beside her, Fin and Alex stood, folding the blanket they had wrapped around their shoulders.

  “You’re not going, are you?” Izzy asked Alex.

  “Hell yes!” Alex said, her eyes shining. “I love ghosts and séances and all that shit. It’s going to be awesome! We used to follow the shoreline over to Willard to go inside the old boathouse. It was creepy as hell but we never saw anything. Now we can explore all the buildings!”

  “Well, you have fun,” Izzy said. “I’m going to stay here and get some sleep.”

  “Oh, come on,” Alex said. “Don’t be a party pooper! It’s only about a mile-and-a-half walk.”

  “I’m not worried about the walk,” Izzy said.

  Alex tilted her head. “Come on. If it gets to be too much we’ll come back. I promise.”

  “If she doesn’t want to go,” Josh said, “she doesn’t have to. I’ll stay here and keep her company.” He put his arm around Izzy again, pulling her toward his plump, sweaty body. Izzy peeled his fingers from her upper arm and pulled out of his grasp.

  “On second thought,” she said to Alex. “Maybe the walk will do me good.”

  Everyone put on shoes and shirts and the seniors made their way along the shoreline, flashlights bobbing, illuminating rocks and sky and sand and forest. The full moon reflected off the lake, giving the water a bluish, otherworldly glow. Luke and Josh led the way, picking the easiest route around overturned trees and car-sized boulders, carrying some of the girls over marshy areas so their feet wouldn’t get wet. When Willard’s boathouse and dock came into view, Luke stopped and turned to face everyone.

  “Let’s split up into groups,” he said. “That way we can cover more territory. If anyone sees anything, we’ll regroup and check it out together. A couple of my friends went down in the tunnels below Chapin Hall and found the morgue. They saw what looked like a woman near the vault where they used to keep bodies.”

  Crystal and one of her friends squealed and hugged each other, giggling. Luke put a hand in the air to quiet them. “The woman’s face was bloated and black,” he said. “Like she’d been underwater or something. She opened her mouth, like she was screaming, and then she vanished.”

  “Oh my God!” one of the girls cried.

  “Be quiet!” someone said.

  “The doctors used to do electric shock therapy in the basement of Chapin Hall,” Luke said. “In the forties there was a huge flood and a bunch of patients drowned down there. About fifty peop
le, I guess. We think the woman was one of them.”

  “Bullshit!” one of the guys shouted.

  “You can let me know how it goes,” Jackie said to Alex. “I’m going back.”

  “Oh, come on,” Alex said. “It’s just for fun.”

  Jackie shook her head. “It’s way too intense for me.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Izzy said.

  “You both can’t leave me!” Alex said. “Come on, Izzy. Please? You’ve got to stay.”

  Izzy groaned inside. “Okay,” she said. If nothing else, maybe she could find something that would tell her more about Clara and her daughter.

  “If anybody wants to go back,” Josh said, “go ahead. The rest of us are going in. Now let’s get this show on the road. Me, Bryan, Paul, and Ethan will be the team leaders. One group will go into the wards, one into the morgue below Chapin Hall, one into Hadley Hall, and one into the Rookie Pest House. Luke and Dave, how about we check out the morgue?”

  “We’re in,” Dave said. He put his arm around Crystal, who grinned and nodded in agreement.

  “Me too,” Luke said.

  “Awesome!” Josh said. He looked at Alex and Izzy. “You guys want to be in our group?”

  Alex looked at Izzy. “It would be amazing to check out the morgue,” she said.

  Izzy shrugged. “I don’t care which group I’m in,” she said.

  “Looks like we’re in,” Alex said to Josh.

  “Got my group!” Josh announced.

  Izzy clenched her jaw. Going inside Willard during the day was bad enough, but going into the morgue below Chapin Hall at night? And with some of Shannon’s friends? It sounded like a really bad idea. But what was she supposed to do? If she tried to go back, Josh would probably offer to go with her. And she wasn’t about to admit she was afraid. At least there was safety in numbers. The best thing to do was get it over with.

  “Everyone, turn off your flashlights until we get up to the buildings,” Josh said.

  They trudged up the grassy incline toward the shuttered buildings of Willard State, moonlight and shadows sweeping across the vast grounds. When they reached Chapin Hall, everyone stopped and stared, shining their flashlights over barred windows and dark dormers. The huge Victorian looked ten times scarier at night. Izzy felt the first flicker of anxiety fluttering across her chest. How the hell did she find herself here for the third time? And about to go into a morgue after midnight, no less?

  “Oh my God,” Crystal said. “That’s the creepiest building I’ve ever seen!”

  “I bet the morgue is creepier,” Alex said, grinning.

  Crystal gripped Dave’s hand in hers. “Eek!” she said, bouncing from one foot to the other. “I’m so scared I feel like I’m going to pee my pants!”

  On the decaying, potholed road in front of Chapin Hall, the teams split up, Ethan’s team headed to the patient wards, Bryan’s team headed to the Rookie Pest House, Paul’s team headed to Hadley Hall, and Josh’s team headed to the morgue.

  Josh led the group around the wards to the back of Chapin Hall, the brick, two-story buildings going on for blocks, with numerous wings, extensions, and rooftop additions making it look like a hodgepodge of smaller buildings had been added as an afterthought. Piles of dead leaves slumped in the corners of the foundations and old birds’ nests hung from the high eaves.

  Behind Chapin Hall, Josh stopped at the bottom of a rusted fire escape. Like the fire escapes on the patient wards, the second floor exit and the steps leading to the ground were inside a wire cage. Izzy hadn’t noticed before, but at the bottom of the stairs was another cage, large enough to hold a dozen or more people, with a wire door padlocked from the outside. If there had been a fire, the people inside could have gone out the door and down the steps, but they’d have to wait inside the cage for someone to let them out. Izzy shivered, realizing it was a preventive measure against escape.

  Josh handed his flashlight to Izzy, telling her to shine it on the cage at the bottom of the fire escape. A vertical line had been cut along one edge of the steel-framed pen. “This is where my friends got in,” he said.

  He hooked his massive fingers through the diamond-shaped holes in the wire, peeled it open, and crawled inside. Everyone but Izzy followed. Luke, Dave, and Crystal hurried up the iron steps to the second-floor landing, their sneakers clanging on the metal, while Alex waited for Izzy. Josh knelt in the cage and reached out to help Izzy up. She ignored his outstretched hand and scrambled inside.

  Dave swept his flashlight over the exit at the top of the fire escape. A piece of plywood covered the upper half of the door. “How do we get in?” he said.

  “Hold on!” Josh said. “I’ve got this!”

  Alex and Izzy waited at the bottom of the stairs while Josh hurried up the steps. He grabbed the bottom of the plywood and yanked it off the door, nails screeching. Behind the plywood was an empty window frame.

  “Your huge ass won’t fit through there!” Dave said, laughing.

  “You want to make a bet?” Josh said. He turned sideways and shoved the upper half of his body through the opening, his feet flying in the air. Dave laughed, thinking Josh was stuck. Then Josh’s hips and legs disappeared and there was a loud thump-thump. Then nothing.

  Dave edged closer to the door, shining his flashlight in the window. “You okay, big guy?” he said, snickering.

  Just then, Josh jumped up in the dark hall, his face contorted, his hands clawing at the air. “Let me ooouut!” he screamed. Everyone jumped.

  Dave scrambled toward the opening, his face red, his nostrils flaring. “I’m gonna kill you!” he said, pushing himself inside.

  One by one, everyone crawled through the opening. When everyone was through, Dave and Josh led them down a hall, moving slowly and shining their flashlights along the walls and floor. The rest of the group followed close behind, paint chips and plaster crunching beneath their feet. The high ceilings made it feel as if there was nothing above their heads, like the roof was gone, leaving a dark hole of black space. Grayish-green paint hung from the walls in ragged flaps, like crustaceans clinging to underwater wreckage. Moldy papers, plastic jugs, and pieces of cardboard littered the floor. The sound of water dripping echoed along the passageway.

  Izzy looked at each closed doorway, hoping to find a file or records room, trying to ignore the feeling that the doors were slowly opening after she passed. Alex walked beside her, her hand clamped on Izzy’s elbow in a death grip. Up ahead, at the end of the hall, a tall doorway topped by a large archway led into a dark abyss.

  “Oh my God!” Crystal screeched. “What is that?”

  Everyone stopped. “What?” Josh said, his head whirling around.

  “Up there!” Crystal said, pointing toward the end of the hall. Josh turned his flashlight on the doorway. On the other side, a seat and what looked like part of a wheel sat in the passageway, tilted to one side like a deformed dwarf.

  “It’s just a wheelchair!” Alex said.

  “Jesus!” Dave said. “Don’t do that again!”

  Crystal exhaled. “Sorry,” she said.

  They started moving again. Then Dave and Josh stopped.

  “What is it?” Luke said. “Why are we stopping?”

  “I just heard something,” Dave said.

  “Me too,” Josh said.

  “What was it?” Crystal said.

  “I don’t know,” Dave said. “It sounded like something moving in the next room. Like rustling or something.”

  “There’s no door on the next room,” Dave said.

  “So?” Alex said.

  “You go first,” Josh said to her, gesturing with his flashlight toward the black, empty entrance to his left.

  Alex grabbed the flashlight, took a deep breath, and stepped in front of the entrance, shining the beam into the room. “Gross,” she said, and went through the opening. Everyone followed.

  Moonlight streamed in through the barred, filthy windows, casting long, striped shadows on the tile floor
. Giant hunks of plaster hung down from the ceiling, exposing old lathe and thick clots of black mold. Beneath the windows, the outer bricks showed through jagged holes above piles of dust and plasterboard. In the center of the room, a thick metal pole came out of the floor, a curved rod sprouting from one side in an elongated S. At the end of the curved rod, a blue plastic seat and buckle hung in the air like a carnival swing. Izzy’s stomach twisted, thinking of the hundreds of tortured souls who had sat in that very chair and had who knows what done to them. To the left, a rusty pipeline and a half dozen porcelain tubs lined one enamel wall. The tubs were surrounded by metal frames and all but one were covered with a dirty, ripped canvas. The canvases were riveted to the metal frames, with a reinforced hole for the patient’s head yawning on one end like an open mouth. Izzy shivered, wishing she’d tried harder to get out of coming.

  “What the hell is this?” Luke said, sitting in the plastic seat attached to the pole. He pushed his feet on the floor and the seat spun around.

  “I have no idea,” Alex said. “But these tubs were used for ice water baths. They used to plunge the patients into freezing water and keep them there until they lost consciousness.”

  “Come on,” Josh said. “I thought we came in here to find the morgue.”

  “Yeah,” Dave said. “Let’s go.”

  Izzy followed the group out the door, relieved to get out of the depressing room. At the end of the hall, they took a right, threading their way around wheelchairs, rolling carts, wooden crates marked Willard State, stained mattresses, and rusted gurneys. Eventually, they came to the top of a stairway. Izzy pulled the sleeve of her hoodie over her hand, grabbed the railing, and followed Alex down the steps. She didn’t want to touch the railing, but it was better than falling, landing face-first at the bottom of the stairs on who knows what.

  The first-floor halls were cluttered with broken wheelchairs, small tables, and vinyl-covered seats with belts and wheeled legs. Signs above doorways read Chronic Block, Acute Block, Epileptic Block, Sick and Infirm Block. The farther the group went inside the maze of halls, the more patient-room doors were missing. Izzy swung her flashlight into the dark entrances, illuminating metal beds, moldy boxes, plastic containers marked Soiled Linen, carts piled high with EKG machines, examining tables with stirrups. Izzy scanned the junk-filled spaces for filing cabinets, but didn’t see any. She wondered if Clara had given birth to her daughter in one of these rooms. How horrible it must have been to deliver a small, innocent baby in this awful place.