He opened his mouth, and a soft whisper came out.
“Little Red. Around the Bend. The Crooked Nose.”
Then he repeated it.
Again.
Again.
Again.
All the while, I stood there, listening to the articulation of the creepy chant as the enigmatic words drew me in. Finally, I shook myself loose and turned toward the door. The whole way out, though, he continued, the words pounding into my memory.
Pictures in hand, I scuttled toward the nurse’s station as the words echoed some more.
I tucked them into my bag underneath the nurse’s station, not wanting anyone to see that I was actually taking them with me.
It was senseless, I knew. But if nothing else, maybe I could understand him better if I unlocked the secrets of the pictures. Then again, maybe they were nothing at all, just lunatic ravings of another of Redwood’s residents, like the man on floor two. Like all of them, really.
The more I was at Redwood, the more I realized the line between lunacy and reality was blurred for so many. I had to keep my line clear and in focus. It would be so easy to lose my grip, I feared.
The Grounds
Feared by staff, patients, and the rebellious school children who try to sneak onto the property, the grounds surrounding Redwood are perhaps its most intriguing feature. The iron gate clad with an establishment sign guards the forest, but it seems unnecessary. Anyone with eyes and a sense of danger, even a weakly developed one, knows to stay out. Redwood is for keeping in. Those who walk on the uncanny ground succumb to its clutches, fall victim to its horrors in one way or another.
Leading up to the archaic stone building is a winding dirt road, unlit and unrelenting in its curving ways. The steep incline and the dense vegetation have led numerous workers and visitors to a near-death experience. One car in 1962 actually crashed into a tree, injuring the driver so severely, she is now a patient in the very place she was visiting.
The trees, mostly Redwoods as one would expect, are thickly planted and densely packed. Even in the daylight, the forest surrounding the institution is a thick moat that delivers the impression of claustrophobia. To walk into the forest for any period of time is to lead one to getting lost. Some legends say that a few new nurses made the mistake of wandering through the forest on their break and never were heard from again. This legend is, unlike the other horrifying tales, unsubstantiated, nonetheless, and most likely a tall tale created to scare curious teenagers from the property.
Still, here and there, an errant teenage boy has climbed the gate and made his way into the forest moat surrounding the building. Incited by a dare or trying to impress a girl, many a wayward teenager has pretended to be stoic and brave as he claimed a twig, a flower, or any other souvenir from the ground. And although most would deny it, more than a few have been almost driven the point of madness by this fool’s errand. For there is something sinister, something ill-conceived about the rugged terrain Redwood sits on. Ten minutes alone in the forest at night, and a chill of the deepest kind is delivered up one’s spine and around every crevice of his or her being.
Voices lurk in the forest, for one. The staff who frequent the sidewalk by the east wall during break claim to hear children’s moans, names, and wails of agony echoing from the forest at repeated intervals. Some believe the victims of the asylum’s older, crueler days spend their time wandering the grounds in search of a way out. Others claim that beneath the grounds of Redwood sits a burial ground that should have never been disturbed.
Regardless, the forestry serves as a deterrent to the residents who have contemplated escape. To somehow make it out of the building is to seal one’s fate to perish in a cold, dark wood that is eviler than it is a refuge. One only has to look around to notice that even during the daylight hours, the forest is devoid of life. Few chipmunks or squirrels chitter in the branches, and even fewer birds sing their songs from the trees. It is as if at the basest level of instinct, the living know Redwood is not a place you squander your time.
Nonetheless, for many who call Redwood home, escaping the forest moat is not a viable option. They are harbored within the stone walls, protected from the forest’s horrors. Or perhaps it is simply that those who run Redwood do not want them to uncover the cold, harsh truth of the wickedness lurking all about thanks to the inner workings of the cold place.
Either way, there is no Stay Out sign at the edge of the property because the wisest humans know in their bones to avoid the grounds at all costs.
At all costs.
Chapter Nine
Iignored my gurgling stomach as I hunched over the desk in my living room. Ten drawings in my hand, all in red. I flipped through them, one by dreadful one. Each one featured the girl in red, but blatant variances existed between them. The first was a full-page drawing of her. The high ponytail, the single eye. The head floated above the body. Oozing scribbles where her neck should be, puddles at her feet with her shoes. Bows on the bottom of her dress. My fingers traced the childlike lines. He was not an artist in any sense of the term. In fact, if I hung up the drawing on my fridge, one would assume it was a child’s artwork haphazardly completed during afternoon recess. Still, the lack of adeptness didn’t detract from my interest in the work. Like an art snob at a gallery, I was mesmerized by the crude details he’d added. I analyzed every line, every stroke of demented genius on the page.
I flipped the drawing into a stack on my desk. The next one featured the same red figure again, smaller in size, but this time she was in some sort of room. It looked like 5B’s room, if I were correct, judging by the placement of a bed and a desk. In this one, the girl’s tubelike fingers were attached to a knife, and a black scribble was on the bed.
I kept leafing through the drawings. Some were in nature, a river in red with a tree and squirrels. But the girl was scribbled into every picture. The line across her neck, the puddles. Always one eye. A character in his twisted world of fantasy. Still, touching the pages where his crayon had scribbled the nonsensical images, I couldn’t help but wonder if the fantasy was, like most, grounded in some sort of reality.
Who was she to him?
My eyes danced over the drawings, over her neck, over her ponytail, as I willed the answer forward. This was no Ouija board, though. No answer could be summoned.
Stupid, I chided myself. She didn’t exist at all, of course. She was a figment of a broken mind, a schizophrenic or hallucinogenic being. It was like the imaginary friend you had as a child but more sinister. I tucked the loose pages in the top desk drawer, sighing at myself. Squeezing my eyes shut, I couldn’t understand why I was so obsessed with him and his childish crayon drawings. They didn’t mean anything. Still, I couldn’t help but be curious about the window to his world. To see things how he saw them. To try to decipher this message he entrusted to me. Because even if it wasn’t real, it was real to him. Didn’t that matter, in the scope of things? Why did we discount that?
I made myself some noodles for dinner and sprinkled on the parmesan, just like I had when I was a child. Television didn’t excite me, and I was too tired to read. Thus, I decided to tuck in for the night—or morning, depending on how you looked at it. The sun had already risen an hour ago, and I was exhausted from my shift. I threw the asylum-smelling clothes into the hamper, put on some sweats, and climbed between the sheets. My eyes closed quickly, and sleep crept over me like a warm blanket. It encased me in a cocoon. My body and mind slipped into that state of stillness that pulled me under, like a weight in the river. Just as I was at the tipping point of no return, however, I jumped.
A shattering noise from the living room ripped that blanket of peace right off, sending me into a cold sweat. Someone was in my apartment, and they didn’t sound happy. I reached for my phone, ready to dial the familiar numbers, but then the footsteps clattered toward my door. They were running as if they were a gazelle, light on their feet but heavy enough for me to hear the distinct steps. I froze, eyes wide and ready
to face whoever it was. It was too late to thwart the attack, I realized as I clutched the blanket tightly in my fingers. Terror seized my face, my voice, and I thought about how crazy it would be if it all ended here.
My door creaked open in a painfully slow display of patience. I clutched the blanket so tightly that my fingers throbbed. It was too late to make a phone call. I would face this alone.
And when my eyes finally saw the child, a scream choked in my throat. Tears cascaded down as her head bobbled and wobbled on her neck, a huge gash almost severing her head from her body. Blood dripped from the gash, and her single eye studied me. The high ponytail, the shoes with bows. They were all familiar in a way that horrified me more than if she’d been a stranger. I blinked and shook my head. I opened my eyes, but she was still there. She wasn’t the residue of an unfinished dream. She wasn’t a figment of my nightmares. I blinked again, this time for a second longer.
I opened my eyes once more.
She was still there, staring straight at me.
She. Was. Real.
She said nothing, the blonde-haired girl who looked to be around ten. She perused me with her single eye, the other socket empty. She looked harmless in her adorable little dress, her petite figure. But her head flailed back and forth as if her neck were chomping toward me. A gurgling noise echoed in my room, the noise mixing with the beating of my heart and my gasping for breath. I clenched my fingers and braced for what was to come, even though my mind still kept chanting that it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Certainly . . .
Every bone in my body rejected the notion that the entity was real, but real she was. That single fact I was sure of, my racing heart validating the sentiment least I try to shove it aside.
She raised a finger to point at me, her face grave. She stumbled toward me, and I didn’t dare move a muscle. I realized that her other hand was clutching something tight. A piece of paper with red crayon streaks. She stepped toward me, her feet echoing on the wooden floor. I stared at the gash on her neck, internalizing the pain she must be in. When she got close, she reached out her arm, the paper waggling at the end of her hand. I studied it, not daring to reach out. The drawing of the river, of the trees, of her.
She dropped the picture on my bed, and then, before I could process it, she’d scurried away, the gurgling noise louder as she zoomed through my apartment. I abandoned my bed to follow her, but she was gone. The apartment was still and empty. The sun was just coming up, the light bouncing through the window and illuminating the broken glass and bowl on the floor. The open drawer of my desk hung wide open, the crayon drawings scattered about.
I shook my head in disbelief. He wasn’t crazy. She was real. 5B wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t crazy at all.
Then, another sobering thought struck me; if he was completely mad, so was I.
I crumpled to the floor, clutching my head as I realized I had no choice but to solve the puzzle if I wanted this nightmare to go away. I also started to think about how many other residents at Redwood were, in fact, telling the truth about the beings they claimed to know.
Chapter Ten
Walking in for my shift through the larger-than-life doors of Redwood, I felt like I’d been run over by a bus and then backed over—three times. No amount of coffee could wake me, yet no amount of deep breathing exercises could quiet my restless spirit.
She hadn’t come back, but she hadn’t needed to. I was freaked. I hadn’t been this horrified since that night all those months ago. I quickly shut off the thought, shaking my head. I couldn’t afford to go there. Not in the middle of all of this. One thing at a time. That was my defensive technique, much needed to survive.
I made my way up the stairs to floor five, my legs bundles of jelly. It took every ounce of energy in me to force my legs to move. Every few steps, I felt the need to turn around and look over my shoulder. I expected to see her there, following me with her bobbling head and dripping neck. The cartoon drawing animated in real life, somehow.
They weren’t just drawings, I reminded myself. They were real. Impossibly, assuredly real. Every single one of them must be real. He wasn’t insane. Not at all.
How many others in the place were the same? Misunderstood by the so-called superior minds when in reality, our “normal,” superior minds simply were oblivious to the truths around us. I thought of the man on floor two who begged me to believe that he wasn’t insane. How many were like him, seeing the truths we couldn’t see yet paying the ultimate price of freedom for it? As I settled into the front desk, ready to take over the floor, Anna came around the corner with a file.
“Wow,” she murmured, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “No offense, but you look rough. What happened?”
I looked at her, confused as to why she was already at work. I contemplated the truth, thought maybe she had experience with this sort of thing. After all, ghosts were no secret to Redwood. Weird shit happened all the time. Perhaps the girl I had seen had graced someone else with her presence at some point, too. I shuddered at the thought. Another question, though, came out of my mouth.
“Why are you here so early?”
She wore the pale face of a woman who had been up way too long.
“They called me at noon. Lucy called off again, and they were desperate.”
“Wasn’t it my turn to be on call?”
Anna approached, putting some files on the desk. She avoided looking at me. “It’s okay. We just thought you could use a day.”
I stifled the replies in my throat, not wanting to confirm what I already suspected. They were worried about me, all the sightings and such. Talking about what I’d experienced wouldn’t help anything. I kept my ideas to myself, suddenly wary of the woman who had been nothing but kind. I felt the familiar wall build itself up.
“Thanks,” I replied simply, and she nodded.
“The good news is that you should have an easy night. Even good old 5B is in good spirits. Calm and quiet, all day. He even smiled at me and said thank you. I’m actually quite worried something is going on. Maybe you should keep an eye on him, on second thought. I’ve never seen him in this good of a mood, not anytime in the recent past.”
My gaze automatically travelled back the B wing hallway, glancing at the doorway. I was, in a big way, glad I’d be alone on floor five tonight. Despite the A wing debacles that were sure to happen, I’d have time to talk to 5B without Anna’s listening ears. I didn’t need anyone in this place having more gossip about how the new girl was crazy.
***
“They think you can help them all,” he whispered when I went in his room a little while after Anna left. I ditched the protocol for room checks, skipping straight to his. I needed to piece more information together.
“Who does?” I asked, studying him.
“Brown and Blue and Pink. Red too. I didn’t see her last night. Thank you,” he said, grinning ear to ear. His demeanor was a placid lake, still on the surface. I wondered what was churning just below in the murkiness, however.
I wanted to ask him about the red drawing girl. I wanted to know her story. Before I had time, though, to broach the subject, he crossed his room and pointed to a neatly stacked pile of paper.
“Take these. Little Brown wants to go, too.” His outreached arm was steady as he extended the stack of paper toward me. I hesitated before reaching out, grabbing the stack.
The top picture was a crayon drawing done in brown again, just like the other night. A skinny, lanky boy was standing on a mound of dirt. In place of his eyes, simply drawn worms bored into his head. His mouth was open in what appeared to be a scream.
Terror gripped me as I thought of the stapler incident, of the figure who had appeared. It was impossible to link them, the figure I’d seen and the crudely made lines on the page. Still, similarities resonated between them, enough similarities to help me ascertain the cold, hard truth.
There were more beings than just the girl from the red drawing. They were all real.
5B pivoted a
nd strolled back to his cot. His face lacked the anguish I’d seen so many times. In some ways, it seemed as though he’d transferred that anguish to me with the passing of the drawings. I flipped through picture after picture, all portraying a lanky boy, all in the color brown. Some pictures had the boy in a hole in the ground, some underneath a tree. Some featured puddles at his feet. All were mundane, except for one fact.
I thought about the photos of red and how she’d appeared. I thought of how it was like she’d jumped from the page, like he’d imagined her up and made her come to life with his box of crayons. I was terrified that the tall boy with worms in his eyes and a mouth spewing a substance would be breathed to life with his drawings again, would show up in my apartment. Like a demented magician, he seemingly created these horrifying beings out of nothing but his waxy crayons in his solitary room.
I shook, studying the drawings for a moment with indecision crowding my brain. I needed to step back. I was already drawing attention, and I had enough of my own problems to worry about. Whatever this was, I couldn’t be a part of it. With 5B staring, I set the drawings down on the desk.
“It’s too late, Jessica,” he barked, his calm demeanor turning volatile as he watched the drawings hit the table. “They’ve already chosen you.” His voice boomed through the cell, an announcer’s voice filled with confidence. He leaped from his cot, crossing the room in a few deep strides. Before I could even think, he had me cornered.
“Take them,” he rasped. “Take them all. They need you. I need rid of them.” He violently whipped the papers in my face. I grabbed them, holding back the tears. I looked again at the brown boy. Why was he screaming in this picture? What did 5B do to him? To them all? And what would I be able to do about it?
“You can help us. They told me you could.” His whisper was now a pitiful plea, a prayer to an unseen God who perhaps didn’t exist. He pivoted again, slower this time. His shoulders drooped. He had faith in a woman who wasn’t deserving, a woman who wanted to be rid of this problem, too. But maybe 5B was right. It was too late to turn around. Redwood had its clutches in me. It had chosen me, in some ways. He had chosen me.
The Redwood Asylum: A Paranormal Horror Page 6