The Lost and the Damned

by Dennis Liggio

  I ran my hand through my hair and scratched my head. Of all the options, this seemed the most sane. That was pretty depressing. I realized I was going to really earn this half million. I needed to get across this hole. At seven feet across, maybe I could jump it. The hanging beam made that more difficult. I didn’t want to go all athletic just to jump and bang my head on the beam. Nor was I too crazy about the idea of successfully jumping and making a hard landing on unstable floor, causing it to fall out from under me. Maybe I was over thinking this.

  I took a deep breath and flattened against the wall, almost clutching it with my hands. One hand held the flashlight, so I had only so much grip with that hand. With another deep breath, I started shuffling across the small bit of floor next to the hole. One foot at a time, I side-stepped my way across. I could now more clearly see the open ceiling from which the beam protruded. I could see wires up there, but none were exposed. I took another step. I looked down. I could easily see the frayed, sparking wires. Dangerous wires, lethal wires. Even if the voltage didn’t kill me immediately, I doubt anyone would find my unconscious body before death came from one reason or another. Maybe the upper ceiling would fall as well. I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to dispel such thoughts.

  I stepped again and I knew immediately there was a problem. As soon as my weight was down on that foot, the floor went soft on me. Half of the ledge I was making my way across crumbled. As I started to fall forward, I grabbed at the hanging beam. I caught the edge of it with my free hand, my other keeping a death grip on the flashlight. First I held the beam, and then I pushed against it, steadying myself. I righted myself, moving my front foot to a wider section of the ledge. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  That’s when I heard the creaking. The sound was a rising crescendo, the sound of wood and plaster tearing. And it was coming from above me. I knew at once what had happened. In grabbing the beam, I must have yanked it from its tenuous balance. As bits of plaster started falling from the roof, I knew I was in trouble. With a spark of adrenaline, I made a mad jump. I caught the ledge with my right foot, my left foot missing it. My torso went down on my right knee while the other leg dangled down the hole. I felt the ground under my right foot creak and begin to buckle. Madly I pushed off with my right foot and scrambled forward, clawing at the ground, pulling myself forward. I hauled myself forward into the hallway before the floor edge fell down. A second later, the ceiling above the hole came thundering down.

  I lay prone, my heart pounding and coughing as I struggled to breathe in the cloud of dust. When I could breathe easily, I stared back at the hole and the corridor behind me. Wires, beams, plaster, wood – it was all hanging from the ceiling down through the hole. I could see no way through and I didn’t trust those wires. I had just barely made it through alive, but one thing was for sure: there was no way back, not that way at least.

  I waited until my heart stopped pounding before picking myself off the floor. I haven’t had too many brushes with death, but I’m pretty sure “Death by Ceiling” would not be the epitaph I wanted on my tombstone. Those who knew me would make it much more ironic: “John Keats – Wrong Place, Wrong Time” or “J. Keats – Owed Me Money, Killed by a Building”. Wiping the dust off myself, I decided I didn’t want anybody I knew writing my epitaph. Bunch of shitty-epitaph-writing jerks.

  This half a million dollars was working out to be more dangerous than I first thought. I figured that all the work was going to be finding her; once I found her, it’d be a simple phone call to Intersperse Records, a short wait for a drugged-out-rock-star-retrieval team, then I’d be on a plane bound for sandy beaches. Someplace in the Virgin Islands or the Bahamas. I've heard St. Johns was very nice.

  My mind basking in white, sandy beaches, I started down the darkened hall, my flashlight bobbing from left to right. I tried to step more tentatively, more lightly. After the way that ledge gave out, I wasn’t sure any of the floor around here was safe. Maybe once I was in the next building I would be more trusting of the floor. Maybe.

  As I crept down the hallway, I noticed light spilling from under a door into a hallway. Unlike those I had seen previously on the left side which faced the front of the building, this door was on the right side. That immediately discounted Army flood lights as the cause. I wondered if it could be a sign of another survivor. I didn’t get my hopes too far up. Since whatever generator kicked in, any light left on went back on, provided it wasn’t destroyed. This could just be a light someone neglected to turn off.

  I slowly crept up to the door, staying close to the wall. As I grew closer, I noticed the sign saying “Men” on the wooden door. No handle, just a metal plate where the handle would be, suggesting one just push. I bent down and watched the light at the bottom of the door. It was slightly obscured and then the obscuration was removed. Someone (or some thing) was moving around behind the door. I didn’t like how my mind so quickly appended “some thing” to that sentence. It betrayed I was more rattled than I thought. I hefted the flashlight in my hand. Long, heavy, ridged grip. Good for bludgeoning and in some cases illumination. It gave me some confidence. If the occupant meant me harm, I could void the flashlight’s warranty on their head.

  Feeling ready as I ever would, I pushed on the door. It pushed an inch before it stopped with a dull noise. Barred.

  I quickly pulled my hand back and gripped the flashlight in a ready crouch.

  Seconds later: “H-hello? Is there somebody there?” A very nervous male voice.

  I measured the pros and cons before replying. “Hello? Who’s in there?” I said.

  “Are you one of them? You’re not one of them, are you?”

  “One of who?” I asked. Immediately my mind went to likely candidates: the Five, Army, murderous patients, Boogeymen.

  “Those… those… things!” answered the voice.

  The Five, probably. “I assure you, I’m no thing. What are you doing in there? Open up, so we can talk.”

  “I’m not opening up! It’s safe in here!” he answered.

  “Look, I need you to open up right now. This whole hospital is under a state of emergency. I need you to open up or…” My mind struggled for something effective. “…or I’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice.” Yeah, let’s go with that.

  There was a long silence. Then there was the sound of the door being unbarred. The door opened a crack and a face eyed me. “You’re a cop?”

  “Police Detective John Henderson, sir,” I said, taking advantage of my suit. “Please open the door and let me inside.”

  With a slight sigh of relief, he pulled the door back. As I walked inside, I tried to catalog the last time I used the John Henderson identity. I try not to use any fake name too often or I might find my lies traceable. And impersonating a police officer was not something I wanted to be traced doing. But I tried not to make up names on the spot, as they always felt stupid and unbelievable. Worse, sometimes stress blotted out any creativity and all you can think of are celebrity names. Police Detective Philip Glass got me a black eye the time I inadvertently used it.

  The bathroom inside was fully lit with fluorescent lights. Think “elementary school bathroom” and you had this place nailed. Two stalls, one urinal, two sinks. The walls were done in white tile, the sinks bolted into the walls. I took stock of the man who barred the door behind me. Shorter than me, overweight, white jacket over business suit. His face was round with small jowls on each side, the skin reddish. He wore glasses and his dark hair was beginning to show grey. I didn’t have to read the ID clipped to his white jacket to know he was a doctor.

  “What’s going on? Is the hospital secure? Are there more on the way? Is everyone okay? What do they know about what went on here?” His nervousness fired those questions at me at a fast clip.

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down there,” I said, gesturing for him to calm down. “Let’s start at the beginning. What’s your name?”

  “Merill. Dr. Arthur Merill Ph.D.”

  Dr.
Merill, eh? I was just going through the papers in your office not long ago. Fancy that.

  “Okay, Dr. Merill,” I said, “let’s start at the beginning. How did you end up here?”

  “Are you the only one?” He paced to the window which faced the back of the hospital, looking out into the darkness. “I don’t see any more. I had guessed that the rescue teams were the ones that secured power. What’s their status?”

  “Relax,” I said. “I don’t know the status of the rescue team.” This wasn’t a lie, I didn’t know any status on a rescue team. With the Army’s current position, I wasn’t sure if there was going to be one.

  “You don’t?” he asked, tensing again. “Don’t you have some walkie-talkie thing you can get in touch with them?”

  “I… I’m not part of the rescue team,” I said, deciding to give him some truth. “I’m not part of any effort related to what went on here. I happened to be at the right place at the right time. I happened to be in the building when all hell broke loose. I lost consciousness and since then I’ve been trying to figure out what’s been going on.”

  “So then, you can’t help me out of here?” he asked, pacing in front of the sinks.

  “I don’t think so. Not right now, at least.”

  “So you’re trapped here too.” He let out an exasperated sigh, walking into one of the stalls and sitting down on the toilet. He held his head with his hands, his elbows on his knees. “Wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  He opened up his fingers enough to reveal an eye which looked at me. “Wrong place at the wrong time. You said you were at the right place at the right time. No, no, no. Just the opposite. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’re all probably doomed.”

  “Okay, I need some answers. You obviously know more than me about what’s going on around here? Why are we doomed?”

  “Monsters. Ashborn’s been making monsters. He wanted gods, but he got monsters!”

  “Monsters?” I asked, trying to be incredulous but doing a bad job of it. “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw that young girl, poor Nurse Laughton, burst into flames! I can still remember what it smelled like as she burned!”

  “Calm down, stay focused on the facts. Don’t try to remember the ugly things,” I said, but knew he was winding himself up, talking to himself more than me.

  “They came through, and I ran. I ran! Wise Dr. Merill ran! I locked myself in this bathroom while others died. I should have gone home early today… when I knew what they were doing. When I saw that light, I knew they had done it. They were somewhat successful, at least. I should have hid then, but that’s when the flames came.”

  “Flames? Do you mean those five people?” I asked.

  This seemed to snap him out of it. “Have you seen them? Are they here?” His head darted left and right, as if monsters were going to spring out of the tiled walls.

  “I saw them leaving the hospital,” I said.

  He relaxed immediately, slumping on the toilet. “Thank god!”

  “Who were they?” I asked.

  “Five patients,” he said, “five candidates. Sacrifices in an experim –“ He tensed again and his eyes snapped to mine.

  “In an experiment? What type of experiment?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said, “I think I shouldn’t say anything more until I talk to my lawyer.”

  “Come on! I need to know what happened here. I can’t go through this place with no clue what’s going on.”

  “Sorry,” he said, “I’m not saying anything more without my lawyer. Ashborn can rot before he takes me down with him.”

  “Ashborn?”

  “Dr. Ashborn. Chief Doctor and Administrator of Bellingham Psychiatric Institute.”

  “Where is he? I’d like to talk to him.”

  He paused for a second, then his words came slowly. “I’m not saying. Until I talk to my lawyer I don’t want to risk saying anything incriminating.”

  I grabbed his shoulders, eliciting a frightened expression as he looked into my eyes. “I need to know what happened here!” I said through gritted teeth. “Lives may depend on it. If any die, I’ll have you charged with… with… reckless endangerment.” Okay, so that last part didn’t sound as tough-guy as the rest of it.

  “I-I…” he started, before gaining some courage. “I’d like to see your badge.”

  I let go of his arms and leaned back. I had no good response to this; quick thinking failed me. “I don’t have it,” I answered. “I lost it. When I was unconscious.”

  He looked at me for a long moment before folding his arms. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  I folded my arms as well. “What if I weren’t?” I decided I needed to work on my cop persona. When I wasn’t using it, people asked me if I was one. When I was trying to use it, they figured out I wasn’t one.

  “I could have you arrested for impersonating an officer,” he said venomously.

  “I could give a fair amount of information to the cops about you and your connection to what went on here. You ran after what Ashborn was doing in the other building. He was doing illegal experiments and you were in cahoots with him – “

  “I would never be in cahoots with that man!”

  “And your experiments went wrong and you ran. Maybe you got cold feet about it, but you ran. Something like that. I’m sure I could embellish enough additional information to get you in far more trouble than you could get me.”

  “You wouldn’t!” he shouted.

  “Look, I’ll be honest with you,” I said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I don’t really care about you or Dr. Ashborn. I’m sure you all were doing some pretty fucked up shit here, but I don’t care about that right now. I might feel ashamed of the human race once the story airs on TV, but right now I don’t care about it. I need to find one person in this hospital, get them out, and then get a pickup. I need to know enough to make sure I don’t walk into any more pyromaniacs, I don’t fall through any broken floors, and that I don’t get shot.”

  “Shot?” he asked, confused.

  I leaned back and ran my hand through my hair. “State of emergency. The Army is setup at the front of the hospital, ready to shoot anyone who comes out.”

  He turned his head toward the front of the hospital, staring at the tiled wall as if he could see through it to a window on the other side of the building. His face paled as the realization set in. “So those five patients –“

  “I think they burned down Sommersfield,” I said matter of factly, though the idea of it still made me sick to my stomach.

  “And then the Army came –“

  “Yup.”

  “And rescue teams –“

  “Are not coming as far as I’ve seen,” I said. “Yeah, we’re pretty well fucked.”

  He sat there, wide-eyed, his mouth open in shock. “Ashborn, what have you done?” he whispered.

  I leaned back on the wall and let him have his time to work though it all. I thought about offering him a cigarette, but I noticed a bunch of fire-alarm triggered sprinklers on the ceiling.

  He sat back against the wall and shook his head. “I should have stopped him.”

  “Yeah, it sounds like it,” I said. “I also have a bunch of regrets about tonight already, but that’s not going to change things.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” he asked. “I mean, besides not being a cop.”

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  “Private?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” I replied dryly. I thought of white, sandy beaches. “There’s a patient at your hospital that shouldn’t be here. I’m here to get her out.”

  “I’m sure most of them would say that they shouldn’t be here if you asked them.”

  “True,” I said, “but there’s a third party that’s highly interested in knowing where she is and getting her bac
k safe.”

  “Can I ask who that third party is?”

  “No.”

  “I see,” he said. “Who is she?”

  “Katie – Kate Doe, Wing D.”

  “Ah, Kate,” he said wistfully.

  “Know her?” I asked. Stupid question, he works here.

  “Yes, one of my patients.”

  Now it was my turn to say Ah. “Anything I should know about her? Is she stabby?”

  “Please, have some respect for the state of mental illness! Not all patients are homicidal. Most are just sick, non-functioning members of society. It’s a matter of pathology of their condition.”

  “So I’m going with ‘not stabby’ here. What else?”

  “I’m not sure how much use to you or your third party she’ll be in her current condition.”

  “Why is that?” I asked with genuine interest.

  “There’s doctor-patient confidentiality…” He started. I rolled my eyes and made a face. He nodded and continued. “I guess that’s not something that matters at the moment. Who knows if she’s even alive. She might die before you find her. If you find her, know that she’s near catatonic. You can get a conversation out of her now and again, but she’s mostly unaware and you have to lead her wherever you need her to go. She was checked in that way. I haven’t found a way to break her out of it yet.”

  “Wait. Hold on. Let's go back to what you said before that. That’s not the first time you’ve alluded to us dying. The Army is outside, the building is falling apart, and the Five have left the hospital. Why are we so doomed?”