“Now you really do sound insane.”
“This isn’t how I wanted it to turn out,” Nurse Ash said, kneeling again. She reached for his hand but Ricky tore it away. “I’m not myself, Ricky, and I haven’t been since I started working here. He gets under your skin. Controls you. With medicine, with hypnotism . . . Can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s isolating you. Everyone is an enemy. He’d hoped that a few weeks mixed in with the other patients would have you doing anything to get away from them, but now that that backfired, he took you away from Kay and he won’t let me help you anymore.”
He was still struggling to catch up, his brain slowed from the drugged sleep. She looked like she meant all of this, but it just seemed insane. Why would the warden bother going to all this trouble just to get him alone when he could have ordered that from the beginning?
“Funny, you say he won’t let you help me and yet here you are. Helping me.”
“Not in the way he wants,” she hurried to say. “I’m trying to help you fight off the meds. The influence. It’s the best I can do. Here.”
Nurse Ash reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a handful of pills, then dropped them onto the mattress at his side. “I’m supposed to give you these.”
Ricky stared at the pills and felt his mouth flood with saliva. The next dose. What the hell was the matter with him? He hated taking pills. They almost always made him gag. Yet here he was, reaching for them.
“It’s my medicine,” he heard himself say in a weird, childlike voice. “I’m supposed to take my medicine now.”
“No!” The nurse lunged forward, batting them out of his hand. They scattered quietly to the cracked tile floor. “Don’t take them. From now on I’m bringing you fakes. Aspirin. He might follow me . . . He might watch. God, this would be so much easier if I could just—” She winced, grabbing her head with both hands and squeezing, her eyes screwing shut so tightly that tears leaked out the sides. “This is how he does it,” she gritted out between her teeth. “Testing me. Testing you. Setting. Us. Up. Against . . . Agh!”
She partially collapsed against the cot, grabbing the frame for support.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
“You have to listen to me,” she hissed, smacking her temple with what Ricky considered way too much force to be healthy. “You have to listen before I forget.”
This didn’t look like the right time for the conversation, but he didn’t know what else to do. She looked so desperate . . . Shaking . . .
“Okay, okay, stop hitting yourself! What are you trying to remember?”
“Jocelyn,” she said. “Call me that. It helps me remember.”
“What are you trying to remember, Jocelyn?”
“Madge.” She cried out as if just saying the name twisted a knife into her back. “She killed herself, Ricky. This place drove her to it. It drove her out of her mind. The warden was giving her medicine. Dosing her, secretly. She became so strange, so different. I don’t know why he did it, maybe to torment me, but he drove her to kill herself. Tanner saw it. He was there, and it broke him, just like it almost broke me. Madge wouldn’t kill herself. She just wouldn’t.”
“He what, hypnotized her into killing herself? I don’t know if I . . . If that’s . . . God, I don’t know if I believe you,” he said, inching away from her and toward the wall. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
“Good.” Nurse Ash let out a breath, finally letting go of her head. She blinked, collecting herself, and then stood, hunting down the scattered pills and putting them back in her pocket. When she was finished, she returned to the cot. Ricky didn’t move, feeling safest wedged in the corner, away from her and away from the cuffs by the pillow.
“Be skeptical. Don’t trust anything you hear in here. The warden thinks he has a tighter leash on me,” Nurse Ash said. She glanced down in embarrassment. “A tighter leash on my mind. He thinks you’re secured to the bed in here, but you won’t be at night. The door won’t be locked then either.”
Escape.
“Officially, I’ll be by twice a day, with breakfast and medicine and dinner and medicine. I can’t guarantee there won’t be sweeps of the floor at some point, but as far as the warden’s concerned you’re behind two sturdy locks.”
“Why?” Ricky murmured. It was all he could think to say. “Why are you doing this?”
Nurse Ash took a few steps toward the door, tucking her frazzled red hair behind her ears. She glanced at him with a sad half smile. “Go back to the first-floor storage room. I tried to look for your files but they’re missing. They’re all missing. There’s something the warden doesn’t want me to see. I don’t know if there’s any way to know what it is, but you have to look.”
“Why can’t you do it? You’re the nurse.”
“Because I have to get back to my night rounds. Someone will notice.”
“What am I even looking for?” he asked, exasperated. She sounded mad, not just crazy, but mad.
“It’s something about you specifically,” Jocelyn said distractedly, shaking her head. “He’s hiding you from us, hiding the files . . .”
Her heels clicked softly on the tiles. Ricky remained flat against the wall, watching as she pulled out a few folded squares of familiar paper and set them on the bed.
“Hide those better next time,” she said, turning to go. “I’ll be back after my rounds to lock you in. If you’re still here.”
Free.
He felt free. Or at least, when the momentary euphoria started to wear off, freer than he had felt since arriving at this godforsaken place. When the euphoria was gone completely, he felt paralyzed, as sure as he’d been that first night that somebody was on the other side of his door, listening in.
But nobody burst into the room when he stood, and so his steps grew more confident as he went to the window and touched the bars. Then he walked a circle in the middle of the room, just to be sure. In his first cell they had left him cheap slipper-shoes to wear when he left the room, but now those were gone and his feet were freezing. Ricky let that sink in.
They didn’t expect him to leave the room anymore.
Before Brookline, the concept of making a deal with the devil had always seemed like an obvious bargain to him—something for nothing—but now he understood what it meant to trade one hell for another. A deal with the devil meant the illusion of choice, not a real one. Ricky tiptoed to the strange, window-like frame in the far wall. It was opposite the bed, the closest feature to the door. He paused, reaching out for the handle of the solid cover and testing it.
If he pulled up, it would raise. It wasn’t heavy, it wasn’t locked.
Ricky let go of the handle. It would be just his luck for the slat to be covering a two-way mirror or maybe a window into the hall, and for the orderlies to realize he was roaming his room, untethered. He would lose the first advantage he’d had since the gala. He might not get another one at this point. Instead he tiptoed to the door, still half expecting it to shock him when he touched the knob. But nothing happened. He turned it slowly, experimentally, and it gave.
Ricky tugged hard, once, and watched the door swing inward. He couldn’t believe it. This had all the hallmarks of a trick. He could just imagine the warden hiding around the corner, making a note on his clipboard—subject waits four minutes, ten seconds before trying the door. It all came down to whom he trusted, which was a tricky proposition when even Nurse Ash herself had said he shouldn’t trust her. But she had brought back the journal pages. She had denied him the “medicine” the warden wanted him to take. (Sedatives, no doubt, something to knock Ricky out so he would be pliable and quiet until the warden needed him again. Disgusting.)
At a certain point, he had to stop trying to figure out everyone’s motives and just take a risk. After all, he knew better than anyone that even his own motives could be a mystery to him.
This was his chance to escape. To leave. Whatever Nurse Ash had said, he wasn’t going to waste it looking for file
s or clues. He was going to get the hell out of here. There’d be time for questions later.
The corridor outside room 3808 was empty and quiet. Somehow, it seemed quieter for the cold, the way a heavy coating of snow made even the noisiest parts of Boston fall silent in the winter. He paced down the hall as far as he dared. There didn’t appear to be anyone patrolling this floor, but there was no telling how many would be stationed on the lower levels this late. The staff had to stay somewhere, and he didn’t fancy the idea of accidentally knocking on Nurse Kramer’s bedroom door.
He explored slowly, running back to his room at every little hint of a noise. Most of the doors in this hallway were identical to his, heavy and secure, but either the rooms were empty or else the patients inside were sedated. The sounds when they came were from above or below, not from these rooms.
Finally, Ricky made it all the way to the door to the staircase at the end of the hall, and here he could definitely hear milling about on the floor below him. He waited under the bare light of a bulb dangling from the ceiling, trying to make out words in what sounded like idle chitchat, a few nurses or orderlies maybe, followed by laughter. It would be almost comforting to know the staff was capable of laughter, if he wasn’t so scared. The better part of that laughter was that it meant they almost definitely weren’t expecting a breakout. The laughter grew farther away, and Ricky dared to try the door into the stairwell. He almost screamed with elation when it gave, and he found himself tumbling down the first few stairs, his excitement making him reckless.
But he drew himself up short and listened again when he reached the second floor, pressing himself flat to the wall. The giggling was farther away still, and when he chanced his head around the corner, he saw that the two nurses he had heard were now at the very opposite end of the corridor, their heads bent close together as they talked. This ward was lit with even circles of light, and a silent orderly lingered halfway down the floor. He had his nose in a magazine, to Ricky’s relief, and so Ricky dashed quickly across to the next door that would take him down yet another staircase.
He neared the first floor and the lobby now, which he knew would be the most treacherous part. He had no idea what waited for him in the lobby, or how he would get through the gated door and then out the main entrance, but he had to try. It occurred to him then that Nurse Ash—if she really was on his side against the warden—might get in serious trouble for this escape attempt once it was discovered, whether that was when he was caught or after he’d made it all the way. It gave him a momentary pang of regret, but his safety had to come first. If Jocelyn was smart, she would spend tonight getting far away from this place, too.
A door shut somewhere on the first floor and he stilled, trying to hear what might be waiting on the other side of the door that led out of the stairwell. There was a sound like distant calling and then a shout. He didn’t know whether to backtrack or press forward, and, petrified, he simply froze.
Just as he resolved to try for one more push to the lobby, the door burst open, and a pale, gangly figure surprised him, sending him sprawling. Ricky gasped as the back of his head hit the tiles, his vision spinning for a moment. He smothered a groan of pain, remembering the orderly with his magazine just above.
He stared up at Sloane, who had forced his way through the door. Half dressed and wide-eyed, the old man trembled at the sight of Ricky. There was no telling where he had been off to or how he had gotten out of his cell, but now he backed away in terror, pushing the door behind him open with his shoulder, even as he held his hands out in front of him like he was fending off an attack.
The vivid scar across his throat seemed to pulse wildly.
“N-No! It’s you! You died, I saw it! I won’t let you finish me off, you hear me? I won’t let you!”
Ricky scrambled to his feet, hearing a pair of orderlies on the first floor sprinting to catch them in the stairwell. Sloane must have lost them at some point, maybe near the lobby. He was impossible to miss now.
“Sh-hhh!” Ricky tried to hush him, looking frantically down the hall, then back up the stairwell. “They’re going to find you!”
“You were like my brother! How could you? How could you do this to me?” Sloane burst into tears, huddling against the door to the stairs and clutching his neck. The orderlies were almost at the stairs now, Ricky could hear their heavy footsteps, and he swiveled around, sprinting away, back up the stairs to the third floor without another glance behind him.
He wasn’t getting out of Brookline tonight, no way, and he already felt sick from the rush of fear and adrenaline. That was close. Too close. He’d been mere seconds from getting caught by those orderlies. Ricky carefully slid back into his room, shutting the door as quietly as he could, hoping that no one would come by to check this floor before Nursh Ash could lock it again. Hot thunder rushed in his ears as his terror died down. For the moment, he was too scared and relieved to be furious at Sloane, and he couldn’t help pitying the old man, too. Ricky wondered what he’d meant with all that brother business. Maybe it was some trauma from the war or something. That would explain a bizarre outburst like that, and why he was here in the first place. Ricky probably just resembled some soldier he had served with.
Ricky sighed and rubbed the back of his head, feeling the tender place where it had struck the floor. What a total failure. He paused on his way back to the bed, his eyes landing again on the covered opening in the wall. He was determined to answer at least one question tonight. To do something rash to remind himself he was still in charge of himself.
Ricky leaned in, fevered breaths warming his knuckles, curiosity and unease making his fingers tremble as he took hold of the handle on the slat and pulled. It stuck at first, giving him trouble, and he yanked harder, putting real muscle behind the effort.
It paid off, the slat flying up and free of his grasp, revealing a spotless pane of glass that gave him a clear view into the neighboring room. A room that was most certainly occupied. Ricky gasped, frozen in place as he’d been on the stairs, his breath fogging the glass, blurring the sight of what had been waiting for him on the other side.
A girl, a little girl staring directly into the window at him, hair and eyes, all of it dark. Those dark, dark eyes, the eyes from his visions, there on the other side of the wall and staring back.
She didn’t blink. She didn’t scream. She simply raised one finger to her lips and pressed it there, hushing them both.
Journal of Ricky Desmond—[Barely legible, written in blood on the back of his previous entry] Late June
So I’ve seen her. She’s real. The girl from my nightmares is here and on the other side of the wall. I can’t sleep tonight. Jesus, I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again.
Ricky woke locked in the cuffs. His initial instinct was to struggle, but he fell still as soon as his head cleared and his eyes focused. As promised, Nurse Ash was there, a small cup in her palm with his medicine. And directly behind her, the warden presided, looming over them with his mouth set into a hard line.
“I need to remove his restraints or he might have difficulty swallowing. It’s easier if he’s sitting up,” she said.
“Do it,” the warden replied.
Then he took a step back, fidgeting impatiently while Nurse Ash took the key ring out of her pocket and adjusted the fit on the cuffs. When they were loose enough, Ricky slipped his hands free and groaned, sitting up. He had tossed and turned all night and his forefinger burned from where he had pricked it on the metal cuff tine to scratch a message on one of his journal pages.
Nothing seemed real or lasting in this place, and it had felt urgent to make note of seeing the little girl, to confirm that it was really happening. She might disappear the next night. Part of him hoped that she would. Most of him.
So this was Phase Two. Medicine and handcuffs. Hypnosis and isolation. He should have feared it more. He should have tried harder to get out when he was still being kept on the main floor. But how was he supposed to know it woul
d become more difficult, not less?
Nurse Ash handed him the little cup of pills and water to help take them. Curiously, they looked identical to the ones that had scattered across the floor the night before. Then again it had been very dark, and it was hard to say for sure . . . But they appeared more or less the same. Had she lied? Were these really just aspirin as she’d claimed they would be?
He had no choice, not with both of them standing there. Gulping the water, he tossed back the pills and swallowed. That satisfied the warden, who nodded, made a note on his clipboard, and turned to the outside window, unlocking the cage bars over it so he could pull the blinds up. Ricky almost missed the soft scratch of paper against his palm, but no, there it was—Nurse Ash had slipped him a tiny note while the warden’s back was turned, palming it to him while she took back the water.
“Now eat your breakfast, Ricky,” she said sternly. Her voice didn’t match her expression, and Ricky could swear she gave him a wink before bustling out of the room. “Shouldn’t have your medicine on an empty stomach,” she added over her shoulder.
“Quite.” The warden’s shoulders relaxed when she was gone. He crossed to the bed, the morning sunlight glinting off his gold watch and spectacles. “You look exhausted, Ricky. Didn’t you sleep?”
Damn. He needed to lie and quickly. “It’s just the new mattress,” he muttered, taking a bite of his eggs so he didn’t have to look the warden in the eye. “I wasn’t used to it.”
“The treatment should help with that,” the warden said matter-of-factly. “You won’t notice the new mattress or the cuffs soon, I’ll see to that, my boy. You’ll be strong. Invincible. Impervious to discomforts and pain.” He took a step closer, leaning over to inspect Ricky’s eyes and then the rest of his face. “How do you feel otherwise?”
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