Aquarius: Haunted Heart

by Sèphera Girón

  It was obvious more than ever that women like Diana had some secret code, some secret weapon that enabled them to seduce men within minutes of meeting them. Madeline had never been able to get the hang of how men worked, how to softly seduce them. Her best tactic was either to argue with them ’til they went away or scare them off before they could even ask her for a date. She could never imagine in a million years being able to entice a man to sleep with her the way Diana was sleeping with Jake.

  How was it that Jake had spent most of the day with Madeline, crawled through the rancid tunnels with her, and yet there he was, oh so casually spooning with Ms. Diana?

  How calm and relaxed he looked as he slept. What a nice-looking couple they make, she thought sarcastically.

  She was the one who needed comforting. She was the one who’d just made out with a demon in her room, who had seen that thing in the tunnels, who had brought everyone together to begin with when they all went to the Kelly Proctor house.

  Snuggling with Jake was her right. But she would never be able to stake a claim to that territory now. She had thought she had a slight chance, if she could punch through his arrogance. But Diana had beaten her to it.

  Madeline huffed and puffed and punched her pillows and blankets into a reasonable nest.

  “Hey, you okay over there?” a voice called out.

  “Yeah,” Madeline responded.

  “Well, keep it down. I’m trying to sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Sorry. Didn’t mean to cause any problems.” Madeline crawled into the pile of blankets and pillows and didn’t dare sigh again.

  * * *

  During the night, there was an endless parade of bizarre sounds and atmospheric shifts. Madeline barely slept all night as the temperature of her flesh ranged from fiery hot to chilly to frigidly cold. She imagined this was what menopause would be like. Just a whole bunch of unpredictable flashes.

  She gripped the blankets tightly, alternating between squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see anything and being afraid to shut her eyes in case she saw anything behind her lids. Her exhaustion didn’t help, and the sight of Jake cuddled up so nice and cozy with Diana nearly tipped her over the edge.

  Oh yes, they were scared. They were oh so nervous and just had to comfort each other.

  Then again, she had to get a grip. After all, if something was really going on between them, wouldn’t they be off in some private area, no matter how weirded out they might be? Ghost hunters would likely be the first ones to fuck in a haunted house. She had.

  What did she care if Jake and Diana shared a blanket, shared an evening, shared warmth and closeness?

  When was the last time she even wanted warmth and closeness or bothered to try to feel it?

  Her fingers were itchy, and she recognized the sensation as her nerves telling her she wanted to paint. She was too freaked out to go back to her room, but she managed to quietly go around to the PAs and ask for some pencil crayons. Luckily for her, most of the crew had pencil crayons kicking around somewhere.

  Getting sheets of paper was no big deal either. She just walked over to the printer and took a few sheets from the feeder.

  She returned to her nest in the corner and huddled over her paper. Her pencils scratched feverishly on the paper for quite some time. She dozed and woke, dozed and woke, while her hands continued to draw.

  At last she was finished. She had no idea what she had just drawn. This whole art-experience thing was starting to intrigue her.

  How could she not know what she had drawn?

  Yet it often happened to her when she was writing. When she was in the “zone,” she often didn’t know what she wrote until she finished writing it. As she’d go back and edit, she’d often marvel at the ideas and words that had fallen from her brain onto the paper without her knowledge. Now she was doing it with her artwork. Maybe she had found the zone for that now too.

  As she stared at her renderings, she recognized little bits and pieces of various ideas from her experiences. The murky, wet tunnels. Shadowy figures. The brilliant light. The dripping altar. And faces. So many faces in the swirling clouds. Hollow eyes and dark mouths. This time, she didn’t recognize anything except the freakishly red eyes of the thing that had been in her room.

  There were men and women, children... people crying and screaming. Faces twisted into horror and pain. Splashes of red overshadowed it all. Red drops of blood. Long lines of rope or wire or some kind of string, weaving through people and around people. Not a pleasant picture at all. She wondered if she was crazy, drawing disturbing images like these.

  Yet in staring at the chaos that had swept from her brain to the paper, she felt oddly relieved. As if she’d just had some kind of brain orgasm.

  She rolled up the paper and put it beside her nest. She crawled back in and curled up and finally was able to sleep.

  * * *

  When Madeline woke, it took her a little while to remember exactly where she was and what she was doing. Her bones ached and creaked as she tried to crawl out of her nest. Around her, some others were just waking up, while still more people were bustling around, either awake for some time or possibly never having gone to sleep.

  She looked over at Jake and Diana casually talking, Jake’s arm still draped around her. They looked so comfortable and cozy, like an old married couple. A pang of jealousy spread through Madeline. It wasn’t so much that Jake and Diana were together, it was the aura of “no big deal” they emitted. Easygoing friendship. Madeline wondered if she could ever be easygoing, if she could ever shut off her brain long enough to relax and just “be.”

  Jake noticed Madeline looking at him and waved. “Good morning, Madeline. Did you sleep well?”

  “It was great,” she said sarcastically. “Slept like a baby in my cradle in the haunted asylum.”

  “I know the feeling,” Jake said. “Diana and I didn’t sleep well either. She was too afraid to go to her room, so I said I’d stay with her here. But I still didn’t sleep, even though I’m exhausted. We all should have been able to sleep great.”

  “Maybe tonight,” Madeline said. “Maybe we’ll be so exhausted we’ll lapse into comas.”

  “I can only wish,” Jake laughed. He sat up and stretched. Diana sat up and stretched as well, rubbing her mascara-smeared eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” Madeline said, wondering why she even said it at all.

  “Is it?” Jake asked. He thought for a moment and shook his head. “That’s right. Happy Valentine’s Day. A silly holiday, if you ask me.”

  “I think it’s romantic,” Diana said as she crawled out of the bed.

  “If it’s so romantic, what are you doing here with us, then?” Madeline asked.

  “Same thing as you. Ghost-busting. Even if I had a fella, do you think I’d pass up this trip to go to some steak-and-beer place? Big deal. I can go out for dinner any old time, but I can’t skulk around a haunted asylum in California every day,” Diana said.

  “I said the same thing to Jake just the other day, when he asked if I was free this weekend.” Madeline looked around the room at the film crew scurrying with their cables and clipboards. “I don’t think many people here have a special someone,” she said solemnly.

  Jake laughed. “It’s the film business. Some of them are married, believe it or not. But most of them are single like us. Who has time to date when you’re busy and keeping insane hours?”

  “I hear you on that one,” Madeline said. As she sat up more, she grew aware of a rumbling in her stomach. It was time to hit the bathroom.

  “Oh, the worst thing about waking up is running to the bathroom,” Madeline said as she pulled up her socks and dashed toward the door.

  “Have fun,” Diana called after her.

  Madeline walked briskly down the hall to the portable toilet. She looked carefully from side to side as she walked, examining every hallway, every shadow, every window ledge. She didn’t know why she did. W
hat would she do if she saw a giant spider clinging to a wall or a masked man with a large, gleaming butcher knife?

  It didn’t matter what she did; she was likely not going to do very well. So why did she still walk around as though she might find something and more interestingly why did she walk around as though she could actually do anything about it?

  It was a primitive sensation. Hunting, gathering, watching, flight or fight...

  The sensing of other things that weren’t visible to the naked eye. There was something watching her that very minute.

  Not the video cameras set up all around the buildings.

  Not the ghosts that flitted here and there through her unconscious as she tried to train herself to learn how to hear them.

  What she was feeling was intrusive to all the worlds. The intruder didn’t belong with the spirits, and he didn’t belong with the researchers. He wasn’t curious, he was powerful.

  His intentions weren’t about asking questions or learning about new ideas.

  This massive masculine energy was violent and vengeful. There was a cry from his soul that spiralled through the hallway; greed, envy, jealousy, some sort of victimized emotion he used to justify his horrific actions.

  Madeline rubbed her face and ran her hand through her hair.

  She didn’t like the vibe of that guy. He wanted too much. He was demanding. He didn’t do things for the right reasons.

  How did she know she was picking up on patients or murder victims? How did she know she wasn’t just a TV transmitter and picking up endless sitcoms and reality shows? Maybe all the humming and hubbub was really from inside herself. Maybe Mr. Mean Guy was really just part of the Saturday morning creature feature.

  It didn’t matter; the bathrooms were all empty, and she was able to relieve herself in peace and quiet.

  As she shut the toilet door, she was nervous about something bad happening while she was inside. She couldn’t imagine the potty being pushed over or something coming up from the pit to grab her. But she was ready for it just in case. She’d seen enough movies to expect anything in the world at a haunted place, no matter how bizarre and disgusting it might seem.

  One nice thing about everyone being friendly and getting along was that the toilets were left in good shape. Being such a tight-knit group meant good manners and good hygiene.

  There was even a hand-washing station that operated with a foot pump. Madeline washed her hands thoroughly and splashed a little bit of water on her face. She wasn’t sure where the water came from and if it was wise to use it on her face. The signs said not to drink it, but she didn’t know why.

  On her way back, she stopped off at her room. It was morning, although it didn’t matter inside the asylum. There was no happy California sun beaming in through any windows. The air was as chilly and depressing as it had been all night. But she didn’t feel as nervous at the moment. It was almost as if a pocket of normalcy had swirled in. She took advantage of her nerves being calm.

  Exhaustion overwhelmed Madeline, and she lay down on her bed for a few minutes. Dizziness swam in her mind, and she thought about her childhood and her mother and other irrelevant, disconnected thoughts.

  She closed her eyes; they burned from the stale air and incense. They probably burned more from the fetid stink in the tunnels. Who knew what chemicals and other goodies were perfuming the air in this place?

  The soles of her feet tingled. There was a cat or something licking the bottom of her feet. She kicked them as she giggled. She was incredibly ticklish. As she sat up to take a look, there was nothing there.

  More ghosts. Now cat ghosts.

  Though cat ghosts in an asylum seemed a bit strange.

  Madeline sat up and went over to her suitcase. She wondered what madness was on the agenda for her today. She hoped it was someone else’s turn to hang out in the tunnels.

  The tunnel thing had to be one of the most disgusting ghost-busting things she’d ever done.

  Well, maybe not the most disgusting.

  It all depended on how one looked at it. She’d crawled through and teetered on some pretty foul things in her past. She had dug her hands into gunk and walked farther into more. She refused to be one of those squeamish girls who refused to get dirty or lift things. She wanted to be regarded as one of the boys, to be taken seriously. So she would try anything once. And it appeared this would be her mantra for some time to come.

  As she dug through her clothes for something pleasing to wear, she looked up at the corner of the room.

  She was on TV. Probably right this very minute. She had to have a winning and wholesome attitude because no one knew how the director would choose to edit the final footage. She didn’t want to look like an asshole, a jerk or a crybaby. She wanted to come across as a serious paranormal investigator, not as some sissy flake. Of course, some folks would likely beg to differ that someone who hunted ghosts for a living and wrote about it could be anything but flaky.

  She pulled on jeans and a sweater and made sure to use a good dose of antiperspirant. Nervous sweat was one of her annoying problems. More embarrassing than the pit stains was the rancid, overripe smell that leaked from her whenever she moved her arms. She’d been to doctors and other specialists over the years to try to discover what was going on with her body odor. But so far, there had been no real response. Her best tactic was to continuously change her T-shirt and to reapply deodorant every couple of hours.

  “It’s just one of those things,” some doctor had told her when she was fourteen. “One day you’ll just grow out of it.”

  Yeah, she’d been waiting twenty years for that happen. And it hadn’t yet.

  Madeline applied a light coat of makeup; after all, she didn’t want her eyes to be lost behind her glasses when she was on television.

  She grabbed the case with all her notes and charts in the hope she could get some images for her own use as well.

  She returned to the cafeteria and was dismayed to see Jake and Diana had already made their bed and were cozily snacking on granola bars and coffee.

  “Come join us, Madeline.” Jake waved her over. “Someone is doing a breakfast run. Soon there will be muffins and sandwiches and fruit, oh my.”

  Madeline went over to their table and sat down heavily. She noticed Diana lifted a bit off the bench seat.

  “I’m sorry,” Madeline said. “I don’t know my own strength sometimes. Or weight, for that matter.”

  “I know how that can be. Especially when I’m drunk,” Jake replied.

  “We all know that,” Diana laughed. “I mean about ourselves, not about you.”

  Madeline frowned and bit into an apple.

  “Okay, listen up.” Jake stood up. “I’ve got the day all figured out. First we’re going to have a big old meeting with Sam so we don’t have to second-guess how the day is going to go. Then we’re going to divide up into groups and do some heavy-duty documenting. After that, we’ll break for a couple of hours and review footage we suspect may have something. Our main concern is picking up all the shots we can today and tonight, because the crew isn’t coming back, and neither are any of you. If I have to come back by myself, I will, but we all know it’s always better if we get several different styles and theories.”

  “Sounds good,” Diana said.

  “I guess the big question of the day,” Jake went on, “is who would like to go down to the tunnels for a few hours? It’s not nice down there, as Madeline will tell you. We did it last night, but I would like to spend my day poking around Ward 18. Who wants to go down?”

  There was silence.

  “Okay, maybe my choice of words wasn’t good,” Jake said. “I know no one wants to go down there. Not really. It’s fucking gross and creepy. But who will be going down for the first shift? Let’s make a schedule, and we’ll all abide by it.”

  “I made a chart of what kind of photos I thought might be interesting for one of my books, if anyone wants to take a look,” Madeline said, putting her papers out.<
br />
  “Just leave them there. People can look over them as the day goes on,” Jake said.

  Madeline quietly put the papers out.

  “We’ll take the tunnels,” Eric said. “Me and Tom.”

  “Good. The rest of you, find what you can. Madeline and I will tackle Ward 18,” Jake said. “Is that good with you, Madeline?”

  “Sure,” she said, slightly surprised he wasn’t going to bring Diana.

  “Okay. It’s settled. Let’s get to work, then,” he said. “When the food gets here, we’ll take a break. Let’s meet back here at noon.”

  The team set to work assembling their gear. The film people were already at their monitors watching for activity.

  Madeline readied her cameras and put fresh batteries in all of them.

  “Are you ready?” Jake asked.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A mystery seems unsolvable.

  Madeline and Jake entered the wing of Ward 18. The atmosphere felt distinctly different than the rest of the building. It was denser, heavier. An overwhelming sense of sadness filled her.

  “You know, the murders in this place, so many of them were unexplained,” Jake said. “It’s really quite strange.”

  “You’d think people would try to solve them. You know, relatives or someone.”

  “Maybe there was too much red tape. Or maybe people just don’t care about crazy people,” Jake said.

  “I guess. I know if I had a relative who died in unexplained circumstances, I’d want to try to find out what happened.”

  “But you’re normal. I suspect a lot of what went on back in the day wasn’t normal. And mentally ill people had no rights.”

  “No, not way back, that’s for sure.”

  “There may have been experiments being done on some of them. That’s what I always thought,” Jake said.

  “Just like in the movies.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately. You know...” His voice turned to a whisper. “I have some theories. I want to bounce them off you.”