The Redwood Asylum: A Paranormal Horror

by L. A. Detwiler

  I turned to leave the room, my shaking hand holding the pictures that I knew I would spend countless hours stewing over. Who were the children, and where did they come from? How was 5B connected? Eerie ideas were starting to brew, ones I wasn’t quite keen on discovering. Still, if my hunches were accurate, then I needed to break through. I needed to solve this because the information could be eye-opening.

  I turned to look at 5B one more time before leaving the room. But as I did, something else caught my eye.

  A flash of brown in the corner of the room. I blinked, and it was gone, but not before the muffled groan bellowed. I was certain it wasn’t an earthly noise. I was also certain it would be another tireless night. I shuddered at the thought, tears falling as I realized the only way to stop the madness was perhaps to enter it straight on.

  It was at the door, though, that the chant began, an eerie, off-tune rhyme that sank deep into my bones.

  “Little Brown, face down, one, two, three, straight from the gate.” He said it twice, but he didn’t have to. I wouldn’t be forgetting the rhyme, after all. Not that night. Not ever.

  Chapter Eleven

  Iwanted so desperately to keep on driving when I approached my apartment, the tiny, decaying building a formidable sight in the still-dark street. It sat at the end of the road, an old, yellow house converted into two apartments. The other apartment was inhabited by a middle-aged man who apparently travelled often because he was never home. The creaky, giant building seemed to always just house me. Loneliness pervaded again.

  I sighed, my hand grabbing for my bag. My whole body thirsted for sleep after a long shift, but I knew it would not come. I eyed the stack of drawings in my bag, considering what would happen if I left them in the car. A dropping sensation clinked in my stomach as I considered what might happen if I took them in. I thought of Red’s visit, of 5B’s eerie words. Then again, wasn’t it too late? Wasn’t I wrapped up in this sinister web of secrets and hauntings already?

  My head was spinning with all the considerations and possibilities. Paranoia was quickly spreading, and I tried hard to dismiss it. Still, it was impossible to squelch the rising fear after all that had happened and all that I feared was about to be uncovered.

  Four children, two of which so far seemed marred by horrific crimes. That had to be it. 5B had to be a killer. Didn’t he? But how couldn’t anyone have figured that out by now? And who were the children?

  Then again, there was always the possibility they weren’t tied to 5B’s crimes but the crimes of Redwood. So many children had passed through the walls of the archaic building. So many had certainly suffered. Perhaps that was the connection. But why 5B? And why me?

  I took a deep breath as I walked inside my entrance, hauling the bag and pictures with me. The chilly air chomped into my flesh as I exhaled the stress, the worries, the questions from the week. I wanted to think it was a coincidence that I’d been chosen for this hellish unearthing of truths. Still, at the back of my mind, I knew why it would be me that was picked.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that if nothing else, solving the mystery and figuring out what the terrifying kids wanted would absolve me of the sins I just couldn’t seem to outrun.

  ***

  The water pelted my skin as steam rose in a swirl around me. I inhaled the humid air, washing away the strangeness of the day as my eyes closed and I sank into myself. I let the shower inundate my skin, an ablution of all of the bad things that had soaked in. Refreshed after a long moment, I let my eyes open and my mind refocus.

  I stared straight ahead at the off-white tile in the shower as the water rained down. One hand massaging my neck, my ears perked up. A light tapping sound caught my attention. I squeezed my eyes shut, certain it was just the old building settling or one of the neighbors rattling about. I shoved down the thought that the neighbors in the old house were rarely home; most days, the house on Willow Lane was inhabited only by me and my dark memories.

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Rapid fire now. It was of a human quality, and my skin prickled as I turned to look out the steam-covered shower door.

  A streak on the glass, a swiped handprint. My heart thudded wildly as the streak claimed skin. The hand was unmistakably human, dirty, and real. My scream pierced the bathroom air as I scurried to shut off the water and backed against the corner.

  Two hands now pressed on the glass. Both caked in filth and horrifying. I was pressed against the tile wall, trying so hard to make myself small and invisible. And then his shrieking visage pressed against the glass. Even through the steamy haze, it was identifiable.

  The eerie eye sockets with worms dripping down, curled on his face. The dirt streaks and mud dripping from every inch of his skin, mixing with the steam-covered glass and streaking it. His gurgling noise as he tapped on the glass harder now, insistent on something unknown. Sobs racked my body as I planned my escape but all the while, I knew it was futile.

  The boy banged on the glass, rattling it and gurgling. I thought he would strangle me. I cursed myself for taking those drawings from 5B. I wondered if I would die right there, naked and alone in the shower.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed to be saved by a God who most likely abandoned me long ago, when my soul was blackened by that choice. Was this about me? Was this about her? Or was it about him, after all? My brain leaped over possibilities as the door rattled and shook, the glass precariously warning it was about to crack. I shook, squeezing my naked, wet body tightly and praying for a fast end. Wondering if an end to it all would be such a terrible thing. I would die alone, just like I perhaps deserved.

  And then, just as quickly as the ordeal had started, all was quiet. My own cries were the only noise in the tiled bathroom. I looked up to see the dirt streaks were still there, but the being was gone. Or was he? I shivered in the corner, my arms covering my chests as I willed myself to think of the next step.

  Slowly, carefully, I peeled myself away from the slick tile wall. My hand shook feverishly as I reached for the door, trying to steady it enough to slide open the shower door. I opened it a whisper, inhaling and holding my breath. Nothing. Quietude. Peace. Still, I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew that whatever the children wanted with me, they weren’t done yet.

  Peering out into the steam-filled bathroom, I perused the muddy footprints on the floor, the streaks on the walls. And that was when my eyes caught a sight on the mirror.

  Words spelled out in mud and blood. A warning. A gasp-inducing warning.

  You Too.

  Two words. There were so many possibilities to the cryptic message, but the sobs in my throat met the realization in my mind.

  I sank to the floor, covered in water, tears, and the remnants of the ghostly apparition who had ascertained what I’d already feared; this wasn’t just about 5B. Tucked in a ball on the floor, I thought of 5B’s chant.

  Little Brown, face down, one, two, three, straight from the gate.

  I thought of Red’s, too.

  Little Red. Around the Bend. The Crooked Nose.

  My mind whirled in a string of madness that was unending as I drowned myself in tears and wished for it all to end.

  I really thought about making it all end, and not for the first time. I was no stranger to darkness, after all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Iwasted no time the next day confronting 5B. Regardless of what was happening in the godforsaken walls of Redwood, I knew that the children had something to do with him. And I had my wicked suspicions from the nature of the drawings, from his behaviors, and from their ghostly appearances that he had some menacing secrets of his own.

  Anna was busy in the A wing, so I took over the B wing. I opened the door, quickly noting that he was at his desk, crayons in hand. My heart leaped at the prospect. A part of me wanted to encourage the drawings, but a part of me knew I needed to put an end to the crazy stuff happening. I couldn’t take it any longer. I stomped over to him.

  “What did you do to them?” I asked, my voice shaking
even though I tried to steady it.

  He didn’t stop, his hand wildly drawing in blue this time.

  I averted my curious eyes, telling myself not to get roped in. I couldn’t handle this anymore. Redwood was too much. I didn’t need this. Jaw clenched in fury, I leaned on his desk. He looked up.

  His eyes were bloodshot now, and it seemed like he’d been crying. He leaped from his seat at the sight of me.

  “Make them stop. Fucking make them stop. You have to make them fucking stop. You’re the only one, Jessica. You’re the one. You. You. You.” His angered words became saddened pleas, the word ‘you’ drifting on the air like a confessed dream. Tears fell from his eyes, mingling on the floor with the ones that fell from mine.

  I had established camaraderie with a mad man. I had somehow become the one to help in this twisted horror game of dead spirits. How would I ever bring it to an end?

  There was only one answer, and I quickly usurped it with questions of how I would fix it all and still escape with my sanity. Of course, maybe sanity was a relative term. Or maybe it wasn’t mine to lose after all.

  “What did you do to them?” I demanded again, needing answers that clearly no one had found. If he had murdered all of these children, he would certainly be in prison or at the very list in the A wing, wouldn’t he? My mind unraveled, traveling down dusty trails of uncertainty.

  “Please, Jessica. Help me. They won’t leave me be. They’ve been so loud. They thought you would help. I thought you would. Help them.”

  And then the chants began. Over and over, the chant for brown, the chant for red. And a new one added to the repertoire as he approached the blue drawings on his desk.

  Little blue. The sand is hot. The cats are a lot.

  Frustration usurped me as I grabbed my head with my shaking hand.

  “What the fuck does it all mean?” I asked, anger growing. I slammed my hand on the desk.

  “Take them,” he ordered, handing me a stack of blue drawings. The words were uttered with such conviction. I glanced at the front of the stack, a boy in a puddle with bulging eyes. I swiped at them, knocking them to the floor.

  “I can’t help you. None of you. I don’t understand. I can’t,” I argued, as much with myself as with him. The do-gooder Jessica was gone. Now, I just wanted what I came to Redwood for. Quiet. An escape from all things troubling in my past life. I didn’t want more horrors here, but that’s exactly what I’d found.

  “Take them,” he demanded, his body shaking now with anger. I backed away, ready to leave the room and tell Anna that she was right, that I couldn’t handle 5B anymore. But before I could get to the door, he had his hand around my wrist, his fingers digging in. My arm screamed in pain as his nails scratched into me. He frothed at the mouth like a wild beast, spit flying with every word.

  “You owe them this, Jessica. You owe me. Take them and find them. You’re in this now, too. You’re the only one.”

  I cried out as I reached for the button that would call security, but before I could touch it, he’d let go. He grabbed the pictures and shoved them at me, a crinkled mess of blue. I didn’t look down at the haunting images, taking the pictures with me out of the room. I was shaking and bleeding, a mess even by Redwood’s standards.

  “Jesus, what happened?” a voice called, and my eyes landed on Anna, who was seated at the desk. She leaped up, rushing toward me as I sank to the floor, a teary mess, feeling like I was, in fact, dying.

  The Murder

  Dying in Redwood is a certainty for essentially all residents of the stone building. Once you walk through those doors and murmur your despondent farewells, you rarely get to leave. It is a miniscule percentage of patients who ever breathe free air after being committed. Redwood likes to keep it that way.

  All, of course, die of natural causes—according to the records kept in the dusty basement. Their only company is a redheaded ghost who only shows herself to the select few staff members; the ones she has chosen, whom she knows will meet a certain fate. Otherwise, the far-fetched stories and twisted truths sit in the dark, never to be examined except by the too curious worker. Curiosity kills more than cats at Redwood, though.

  Clearly, those of us privy to the ins and outs of the asylum, however, know the truth that the records do not divulge. Undoubtedly, a fair share of deaths at Redwood are of natural causes; the natural deadening of the mind after decades of misuse, the decaying of a body that does little other than rest in solitude, and the passing of diseases amongst the residents who are forgotten by the world. Still, for every natural death at Redwood, there is at least one resident who met a more sinister fate. The Drowning Girl, for example, is one of the most infamous. There are many others lost in the sea of hidden memories, many names of the murdered who have been covered up in order to protect their murderers.

  There is one homicide, though, that took place in the walls of the asylum, that has not been forgotten—by residents, by ghostly patrons, by the whispers of the staff. And most of all, within the psyches of the doctors, for in the 1950s, one of their own fell victim to the sinister ways of Redwood.

  Officially, Dr. Woolstone died of a heart attack. A terrible tragedy, the random heart attack striking on Christmas Eve. In the asylum late at night making his rounds like the patron saint of the hospital that he loudly proclaimed he was—a ridiculous notion, I assure you—Dr. Woolstone was found dead in the hallway, clutching his chest. A terrible loss for all, but especially the institution.

  What the newspapers and the staff did not reveal, not even to his own family, was the true nature of his death. It was no sudden onset of heart palpitations that took him down, no sad twist of fate.

  It was murder. Pure and simple.

  A rusty pair of scissors gleaming in his heart. That was the heart attack that claimed Dr. Woolstone. And it was none other than his favorite patient, his Little Dove, as he called her. Rachel.

  The black-haired girl was a stain on society, according to her parents. Her melancholic behavior turned violent the July they turned her back in to Redwood, which had been her home at the tender age of nine thanks to a few too many run-ins with the neighborhood’s pets and a few too many social suicide behaviors. But that summer, according to her mother and sister, two gems in society, Rachel tried to kill her own family. And thus, she was sent for help and care that only Redwood could give.

  In other words, she was sent to the shadows so her sister could carry on the family reputation peacefully, reputably, and with a financially sound pick to carry on the legacy. Something her sister, Rachel, who besides a penchant for killing neighborhood animals had a penchant for kissing members of the same sex, a scandalously perilous choice in her time according to her family, could not carry out.

  The walls of Redwood closed in on Rachel. The staff claim she was a vile girl with horrific, black markings on her soul. Some whispered voices, though, claimed that Dr. Woolstone had more than a tenderhearted appreciation for Rachel’s plight; some claim he tended to offer therapy of the sexual kind when the lights at Redwood went out. Whatever it was, Rachel found a way to forever silence his perverse urges.

  Officially, no one knows how the scissors got to her room. Someone does know certainly. But no investigation led to the true source. I would like to think that the person who armed Rachel was too wise, too spectacularly cunning to get caught. Regardless of the details of how it happened, Rachel was armed and was inherently dangerous. Thus, as the Christmas carols welcomed in the savior’s birth, Rachel plunged the scissors deep into the illustrious asylum doctor’s chest, forever silencing him in the night. Then, she turned the scissors on herself, leaving an eerie ornament behind to remind her family of the wrongs they had done.

  Unlike many souls at Redwood, Rachel does not make her presence known frequently. Although last year, one of Rachel’s descendants was committed for a short period of time in the asylum, and that Christmas, the screams from her room seemed to alert the staff to an unearthly presence.

  Tha
t girl didn’t last long. She was too weak for the walls of Redwood. Or maybe she was too strong. Because in some ways, it seems the strongest of Redwood’s residents find a way out—even though it is not a way back to the world of the living.

  Rachel’s legacy lives on, though, in the whispered tellings amongst the staff and certainly in the back of each current doctor’s mind. Because sometimes, the residents do find a way to rise up. Sometimes the prisoners seize the power. And sometimes, they have help doing it.

  The humans of Redwood might not understand all the intricate occurrences and malevolent plots in the place, but they do know one thing, at least the smart ones do: a weary soul, a restless spirit, claims a certain amount of power, too.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the corner room of floor five, Anna tended to my scratches with the medical kit and a touch of tenderness. I sat quietly, my nerves calmed.

  “What made him so upset?” Anna asked as she bandaged the scratches, even though I insisted it would be fine.

  I eyed her from underneath the fringe of my bangs. Hesitation crowded into my heart and mind. Should I trust her? I shook my head as she tenderly wrapped the scratches. I really was spending too much time in the walls of Redwood. Paranoia was settling in and taking hold of every nook and cranny of my being. Still, I bit my lip before proceeding. Cautiousness gave me pause.

  “The pictures.”

  She stopped what she was doing to eye me. “The drawings? Why is he mad at you over them?”