Asleep
Page 26
“Draw.”
She turned her face toward the ceiling and shouted, “No.”
Something warm and wet splattered onto the canvas, something red. Rose jumped up and backed away from the easel, trembling with each step that brought her closer to the wall. She tripped over the tray of food, scattering bits of eggs and bacon all over the floor, then backed into the door knob. She pulled on it, banging and shouting and screaming for someone to help her.
To get her away from the blood. That had to be blood.
“Please, please help me!”
No one came. Nothing but the sounds of the baseboard heater and the occasional drip of more red fluid reached her ears.
Tears streaked down her face and fell from her chin, and she leaned her forehead against the cool steel preventing her from leaving. “Please.”
“Draw. Draw. Draw.” The chanting began again, starting as a low, dull hum and growing louder and louder, the room more and more crowded.
Rose wiped her face and turned around, unable to see anything beyond the space surrounding the easel, where the small shaft of light broke through from above. “Leave me alone!”
A cold, bony hand grabbed hold of her right arm and yanked her hard, nearly pulling her arm right out of its socket. Then another hand clamped her left wrist, the two playing a game of tug of war with her body.
“Stop. Please, just stop.” Rose squirmed beneath the grasp of her invisible captors, trying to break free. She pulled them forward, but they were much stronger than she was.
“Draw.”
“I already did.”
“Lies.” The bony hands pulled her apart, inside, outside, everything in Rose spilled out and onto the floor. She’d never wanted to wind up in a pile of goo on the floor, but now she could think of no better fate. The person on her right tugged so hard Rose’s elbow popped out of place. “Draw.”
Bright lights blinked in and out of Rose’s vision, and crying and screaming tore from her throat. She couldn’t take anymore. She just wanted to go home. She wanted her mother, her father, the comfort of her room, of her school. Anything but this. “Please.”
“Draw.” The tug of war stopped, and she stumbled toward the easel, rubbing her elbow, not even sure if she could move it enough to draw. Rose placed her hand on the empty, white canvas and paused. Blood covered her arm. She pressed her hand to the page and left a bloody print. Rose glanced at her shirt.
More blood.
Her heart raced, the whole time screaming in her head for Phillip, Phillip, Phillip.
“Who?” Dr. Underwood’s voice cut through her terror, the first time she’d heard him speak in weeks, and Rose spun around in her chair, seeking him out.
She couldn’t find him in the darkness, but she knew he was here. “Where’s Phillip? I won’t draw anything until I know he’s safe.”
“Phillip does not exist.”
The shock ran through her wrist, but adrenaline surged through Rose. She got to her feet and clenched her fists and shouted, “Yes, he does!”
Another shock that nearly brought Rose to her knees.
“You’re the liar.”
A cloaked figure approached Rose, head bowed, hands clasped at his waist. She knew it was Underwood. It had to be. Why else would she have heard him in the darkness if he hadn’t slipped up while getting ready to wreak havoc on her emotions?
“And I’m going to prove it.” Rose threw back the hood and screamed, her knees buckling under the weight of the truth. Dr. Underwood wasn’t under that cloak. A man with heavily scarred skin, long, deep grooves mangling his cheeks and red eyes, glared at her. And Rose knew she’d gone stark-raving mad. She’d touched this person. He was real. He was real and she was crazy because no one who had red eyes could be real. No one that mangled could stay alive. She saw through his skin to his teeth, his sharp, pointy, yellow teeth.
She fell backward, onto her butt, and knocked over the easel. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
A drop of red landed just above his eye. The man wiped the fluid away with his finger, then stuck it in his mouth, removing it with a sick smack of his lips. Then he righted the easel and pointed at it. “For you to draw.”
Rose stared him down from her position on the floor, adrenaline and fear and self-preservation keeping her firmly rooted in place, breathing as though not enough oxygen existed in this room.
“Suit yourself.”
The man flicked his fingers, and from somewhere above her, she heard screams. Terrifying, gut-wrenching screams. A flow of red now hit her canvas, pouring onto her page and dripping over her charcoals.
“You said he doesn’t exist.”
The man smiled, his jagged, rotten teeth the only thing Rose could focus on. “He does not. But the person who does exist won’t for much longer if you don’t draw.”
Again he pointed at the canvas, and again the screaming filled her ears, and then the man dissolved right before her eyes. He was there. And then he wasn’t. Thick and normal and touchable, then see-through, then gone.
“Dr. Underwood! Help me.” Rose jumped up and ran to the door and pounded on the metal and screamed and screamed. She pressed her face to the glass, her eyes wild and seeing nothing. “Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.”
She turned and glanced up at where the light flowed from above and saw the blood pouring through the ceiling. The sight of all that red made her forget about the man. Made her forget about being trapped. What if that was Phillip’s blood? What if they were going to kill him because she wouldn’t draw? What if he died and it was all her fault?
She couldn’t fail him. Rose picked up her supplies and sat at the chair and she drew the fucking pictures that they wanted her to draw. Not the special photo, the one of Phillip, but horrible, awful, hideous things. A naked man strapped to the floor of a dark, concrete room, a person hovering above him with a knife, slits all in the tortured man’s skin.
Not in her wildest dreams would Rose have ever created a piece like this, something so traumatic and ugly.
She hated it.
So she tore the canvas off and closed her eyes and she thought of her parents and home and drawing at the kitchen table with the setting sun sinking below the mountains, anything to get the blood out of her imagination, out of her thought process. Rose breathed deeply and thought of the sounds of the forest, of the water flowing over rocks, of the birds hopping from tree branch to tree branch, and then the water turned to blood, and the birds had red eyes.
And she drew them anyway. Over and over. And over and over.
Three pictures.
Nine.
An entire ream full of paper.
Until she couldn’t see straight.
Until she remembered her mother was her inspiration, and how disappointed she’d be to see these pieces.
Until one of the hooded figures snuck up behind her and inserted a needle into her arm.
Until she sagged against the easel and then fell over with it, crashing to the floor.
But something was different this time.
Another burning prick to her skin.
Fire surged through Rose. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She jumped to her feet and spun around, vision melting, but every sense heightened in the now blindingly bright room.
Something was being dragged across the concrete on the left side of the room. The sound was loud and fuzzy in Rose’s ears as she moved away, arm hairs prickled with fear.
“You told his family he was violent? How could you do that to him? How could you lie?” a woman shouted on the other side of the room, a woman whose voice sounded so familiar, so right to Rose that she wanted to run toward her. “And now I find this? I’m calling the police.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s totally necessary, or have you lost your mind? You have. You’ve totally lost your mind.” Nurse Judy. That’s who was shouting at the doctor. “You told me you moved her out of your care. That you weren�
�t equipped to handle someone with her needs, and I believed you. Over her. And here you’re doing exactly what she said, but worse! Is this all some play to you, a production?”
“Now, now—”
“Don’t you dare ‘now, now’ me, Frederick. You’re going to end this, right now. Your career is over. This place might not even survive what you’ve done. You’ve ruined us all!”
Rose couldn’t see through her blurry eyes. She couldn’t see even though light filled every inch of the room. She tried to remember her bearings and find her way to the door, holding her arms out in the empty space before her until she made contact with the knob.
“Stop her!” Dr. Underwood yelled, low and angry, his voice repeating in her head over and over. Had she really heard it? Did it matter?
The dragging to Rose’s left intensified, and something cold and slimy wrapped around her ankle. And she screamed. Oh, how she screamed as sharp, stinging nails dug into her skin.
“Phillip,” Rose shouted, hoping he could hear her, rescue her, hoping she didn’t bleed to death right here in this very room.
“You see, she needs this. She still believes that boy exists. He does not exist,” Dr. Underwood replied, an undercurrent of danger running through his deep voice, as Rose bit down on her hand to hold back her whimpering.
She strained to hear Judy’s response, something to give her peace as to whether Phillip was real or not, but screaming echoed down through the ceiling, and more crimson flowed through the opening. The blood swirling with the rest of her vision.
Phillip might not be real.
And this might not be real.
And she really could be seeing and hearing things.
But Rose had to get out of here.
She kicked her free foot back, hoping to shake the hold this . . . thing had on her, and hissing filled her ears and sharp stings tore into her flesh again. Pain raced up her calf, and her legs felt as if someone had attached ten-pound bricks to them.
Her heart couldn’t possibly beat much faster as she reached for the handle, blind in the brightness, and turned. Momentary relief shocked her to reality when the door opened, until she tried to take a step and fell flat on her face, her teeth taking a chunk out of her bottom lip. Her legs. Whatever had bitten into her ankle made moving almost impossible, but she dragged herself up and limped as fast as she could to get away, screaming Phillip’s name the entire time.
As she neared the stairs, Rose’s vision came into focus and she saw the fairies floating around her head, pointing at her and laughing. She saw the faces from Heather’s room circling around her. And at some point between her last visit and her lock down, all the rooms in Hall HS had become occupied. Patients cloaked in black robes stood at the metal doors with their faces pressed to the glass, shouting for help, or banging their heads. She cringed at the sight of all the handwritten names and numbers.
Confusion swept her away and threatened to park her in this hall permanently. Maybe she deserved this for running away from home, for refusing to speak to her mother for a year, and for dropping drawing and school. That’s right. She’d almost forgotten she quit school. Rose left the house every morning, but somewhere between home and the massive building she detoured and wandered off on a hiking trail meant for vacationers. There, she’d talk to her mother as if she were sitting with her on a rock, as if she were the mother Rose remembered and loved.
There, she’d talk to things that didn’t exist.
She wanted Phillip to exist just as much as she’d wanted that mother to exist, but did he? If so, where was he? Why wasn’t he standing at one of these doors with a hood around his head? Why wasn’t his name written on one of these doors?
“Get up and run, Rose,” Nurse Judy screamed from somewhere deeper in Hall HS, and Rose listened.
Her ankle rammed into the bottom step, and she cried out in pain. She tried to inspect her ankle for injuries but couldn’t see anything through the white scrubs covered in blood. Something had attacked her and would again if she didn’t keep moving. Rose used the hand railing as a crutch and hopped up the stairs, moving as fast as she could, ignoring the shouting coming from behind. Dr. Underwood and Nurse Judy had moved into the hall, the nurse shouting for Rose to keep going over the sounds of Underwood shouting orders for someone to apprehend Rose.
“Get to Mr. Gordon, Rose. He’ll help you. I pro—”
A gunshot cut off the rest of Nurse Judy’s words.
No. No. She couldn’t be . . . .
Rose had to make it up the stairs.
She had to find Mr. Gordon.
And she had to get out of here alive.
Because of her, Judy wouldn’t.
25
The hospital went into frenzy at the explosive sound of the gunshot. Orderlies held patients by the arms and dragged them to their rooms while other patients screamed and ran up and down the halls. Gracie rocked back and forth while flopping on the floor next to her overturned wheelchair, a mermaid’s tail for legs, hands in her wet hair, muttering and chanting in the way only the insane and deeply frightened do. Rose shook her head and looked again, finding legs instead of a tail this time.
Two armed police officers with faces spinning and blurry ran down the stairs Rose had just hobbled up, not even bothering with a second glance her way.
A quick check down the outside set of stairs revealed Mr. Gordon standing near the doors, locked in a heated argument with another officer. He must have spotted her, because Gordon asked the man to hold on for a second, then turned and met Rose’s eyes, his red and beady, shouting her name above the cacophony of sounds filling the institute to deafening levels. But she wasn’t planning to go to him, not when his eyes looked like the others who’d tortured her. Not when she couldn’t be sure he was really on her side—or if he existed at all.
But one thing she knew, one thing still bright red on her skin, was blood. More than one person had been hurt because of Rose, and this one she might be able to save. She intended to find him.
Deep inside her soul, Rose wanted to discover Phillip locked up and bleeding in the room above hers. But she also hoped for his sake he wasn’t real, he wasn’t being tormented by the demons of a man full of them, that he could never be harmed by anyone.
At the entry to the upper level of Hall HS, Rose paused to catch her breath and cringed at the stinging in her feet and the river of bloody footprints she’d left in her wake. Even if Gordon hadn’t seen where she was going, anyone would be able to find her. She had to keep moving. Rose stood straight and limped to every door in the hall, checking in the windows, knocking and calling out if she couldn’t see anyone. Most contained people in their beds, people not even startling when they saw her, some of them dressed in cloaks, some of them not dressed at all.
But one room, one room had a blacked out window. One room had the muffled sounds of a man crying inside.
Rose’s heart plummeted. Please, don’t be Phillip. Please don’t be Phillip.
She knew seeing him would break her in a way she wouldn’t be able to handle. Testing the knob, Rose found the door unlocked, and a quick peek inside revealed nothing but darkness and the pungent smell of filth and feces.
“Hello?”
“Please.” The soft crying stopped. “No more. I can’t take no more.”
Not Phillip.
“I’m not here to hurt you.” Rose slipped inside and checked either way down the hall to make sure none of the fairies or figures or Dr. Underwood had caught up to her yet. Once she was confident they were alone, she closed the door and felt along the wall for a switch, bracing for some unseen monster to strike her leg, to finally get enough venom in her to stop her heart, holding her other hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. “What’s your name?”
“Jeremiah.”
Tears streaked down Rose’s cheeks, instantly leaving cold trails. His room had no heat, no warmth. The sounds of his teeth chattering raised the hairs on her arms. Her teeth chattered in response.
The man was naked, on a bed covered in piss and shit and blood. Cuts lined his pale arms, a cast stretched from his toes to his thigh on his left leg, and bindings held him in place the same way Rose’s had downstairs. She counted to three, took a shallow breath, and then turned back around, hoping she’d see something different this time. But there Jeremiah lay, splattered in dried blood, leaking fresh blood. Rose scanned the room for clothes. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
But what Rose found were drawings of a woman with brown hair and brown eyes, with a delicate nose and a heart-shaped face, all over the walls of his room. She immediately recognized the woman from pictures her mother had shown her through the years and knew she’d made a mistake in coming up here. Rose should have run for Gordon. She should have left this building and never come back, just how she’d planned to all along. “Heather . . . .”
“Just let me die. Please.” His voice cracked on the word please, a strangled sob cutting him off before he could finish. He kept his face turned toward the wall, away from Rose, like he was ashamed to look her in the eyes. “I know she’s dead. She killed herself. It’s my fault. All my fault. Because of me.”
Had he heard Rose say Heather’s name? Was he . . . ? Could he be the boyfriend who led her here? Who sent her on the destructive path? Real or not, Rose couldn’t walk out that door without asking more questions, without figuring this out, why she’d imagine him. “Who’s dead because of you?”
“Heather. I gave her drugs. I got her pregnant. He reminds me every day. Every day. Every. Day.”
Pregnant? Why hadn’t her mother ever told Rose about Heather being pregnant? Unless she didn’t know. Unless the entire pregnancy had been kept a secret while doctors kept Heather locked away. Rose knew Underwood had been adopted, that he had a connection to Heather and a commitment to prevent her fate from happening to others like her.