I reached across the table and touched her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And I was.
We talked for a while about Essic and his downward spiral. But there wasn’t anything else that was helpful. I was walking to the door to head home when I paused in the living room.
A photograph of a little boy sat on the mantel of the fireplace. The boy was holding a fishing rod, smiling from ear to ear. He beamed, a huge gap between his two front teeth and bright blonde hair. He was tall and fair, a boy who just looked like a charmer.
She noticed me examining the photo. “That’s my sweet boy. One of the last photos of him.”
I studied him, questions stirring. The police cleared Essic, but could he actually be responsible? Had they missed something? Or, like Mrs. Ambridge said, was Anthony’s death simply the catalyst for Essic’s mental demise?
I didn’t know. I left, thankful for the meeting but feeling more frustrated than ever. I was no closer to an answer. Maybe I never would be.
The dead don’t talk after all. Who would actually reveal their secrets?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Walking toward the desk the next night at work, I froze in the middle of the fluorescent-lit hallway. Roxy animatedly chattered in a sad attempt to cheer him, but it didn’t matter. The man in the wheelchair that she was pushing was unresponsive and twitching. His eye stared at me, and I shivered. He didn’t react to the sight of me. Or maybe he couldn’t. I wasn’t certain. Still, something in the way his piercing look stabbed into me made me think he was in there. And even though he couldn’t voice it, I knew one thing; he was devastated I hadn’t taken the warning. Perhaps he simply thought I was a fool. In truth, maybe he was thinking nothing at all judging by his withdrawn state.
“Where is he going? What happened to him?” I asked, stopping Roxy as she wheeled Jack toward the elevator.
“There were some issues yesterday. He was extremely hostile and volatile. Dr. Righthound took him for treatment just now. He’s okay. It just takes them a bit to come to after the treatment.”
I shook my head. “But he’s never been a problem, has he?”
Roxy shrugged. “When he first was admitted, which is normal. But no, not until you showed up. Anna said you have a way of winding everyone up,” she said, eyeing me. She grinned to soften her words, but I wasn’t soothed.
“So where is he going now?”
“Jeez, girl, so many questions. What, you take a liking to him, too?” She rolled her eyes and batted at me with her hand. I fought the urge to ask what that meant, but I had the sneaking suspicion that Anna had been chattering about me, and not in a good way, to the staff. Or at least to Roxy. “Listen, you can’t get attached. You have to learn that quick. But he’s going to floor five, your old stomping grounds.”
“Wait, what? Why would he be going there?” I was floored and actually stepped in front of the wheelchair so she couldn’t keep going. I looked down to see that the janitor’s jaw had gone slack and a trail of drool dribbled down his mouth. His whole body seemed to quake, but his eyes were stuck in a single spot, his head tilted at an unsettling angle. What the hell did they do to him?
Roxy sighed. “We’re making some room for another resident who needs to be on floor two as per her family. They have a lot of money, and Anna wants to make them happy. We’re just moving old chomps up to that spot on floor A temporarily. Anna said something about him maybe qualifying for a trial or something at another institution anyway, so he won’t be there long. Not that it’s any of your business, by the way.”
My mind whirled with possibilities. Another one leaving? He couldn’t speak, but I could hear his dire words echoing in my brain. Get out while you can. I looked at the man who had just days before been healthy and hearty. Now, he was a feeble pile of skin and bones, his potentially warped mind imprisoned by an uncooperative body. They’d ruined him. Why?
My stomach sank with the knowledge that I had drawn so much attention to myself, first with 5B, and now here. I was on thin ice. If the janitor was right, how much time did I really have? Not long at all, and yet I was no closer to finding peace for 5B, or to figuring anything out at all. I wanted to leave, to get in my car and drive away. But it felt selfish somehow. Wrong. I had enough sins on my soul. I needed to try to make things right. A flash of that windy, dark night, that rearview mirror in my mind.
I coughed, hoping to clear it.
“Can I take him for you?” I asked, smiling nonthreateningly. Roxy studied me, and I thought she would say no. But she shrugged.
“It’s my break time anyway. Sure. But come straight back then. We have meds to distribute before lights out.”
I nodded and took over driving the wheelchair. I steadily headed toward the elevator, the ding startling my jumpy self as I wheeled him in and punched the button for floor five. I wanted to tell him it would be okay, to reassure him that I would figure it out. But I didn’t know how it could be okay. Or what to do about it. Should I call the police, tell them I suspected shady happenings?
No. I didn’t have any evidence of anything at all. I needed something solid I could take to them, something to get them looking into the asylum. I shuddered at the thought that perhaps some who had gone before me had done just that. How many other “residents” were simply prisoners in the place of horrors, abandoned by the staff, by Redwood, by the world?
“I’m sorry,” I said to him before the doors dinged open on floor five.
I heard an anguishing gurgle. I didn’t know which would be worse—if he’d lost mental capacity in the treatment, or if he didn’t. Guilt assaulted me as I wheeled him toward his new prison, tears threatening to fall as I wondered how the hell any of it could be real. I expected to see Anna at the desk, but it was Brett who greeted me.
“Where’s Anna?” I asked, pausing at the door to the room.
“On break.”
“Oh,” I murmured. So I would have a couple minutes until Roxy told her that I’d come up here. I was certain that Anna would be up to floor five in a hurry. It didn’t leave much time.
I felt terrible about dumping the man into the room and leaving in a hurry, but if he had a prayer of being saved, I needed to get proof that could be investigated. If I could prove that 5B had murdered children, perhaps it would launch an investigation. Perhaps the police could be encouraged to investigate Redwood altogether. It was a ludicrous idea, thinking I could bring down an institution that had terrorized for well over a century. But there was apparently no one else.
I rushed down the hall after locking up, eager to see if there were any more drawings I could find in 5B. I burst into the room quickly, knowing I didn’t have much time. He was in his cot, but there was a stack of paper on his desk. I claimed them, glancing down to see blue.
He’d said there were four. I’d seen Red, Brown, and Pink. I’d remembered the rhyme about Blue, had seen his drawings on that first day. But something was missing.
Yellow. I shuddered as my suspicions from early rang true. Shit. It was worse than I could’ve ever thought.
I didn’t have time to ask as badly as I wanted to—and perhaps a part of me didn’t want to verify what I was assuming to be true at all. I rushed out, tucking the drawings carefully in my pockets as I beelined for the elevator, returning to floor two to pretend. To pretend to be a mindless staff member. To pretend to be focused on my job. To pretend like Redwood wasn’t savagely swallowing up humans and spitting out bones.
So much pretending in everyday life, isn’t there?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The dreams that came when I fell asleep made me wish I’d never crawled into bed, despite my exhaustion. After studying the drawing of Blue, his bulging eyes and lake waters lapping at his feet, I waited patiently to see if any spectral visitors would appear. Nodding off at my desk as the sun was rising, I decided I couldn’t fight it any longer. If the children were to come, they would come. I couldn’t stay awake anymore.
Sleep did
not come easily, anyway. It was interrupted by fitful, sweaty intervals. In my dreams, I saw fire lapping up the body of a little boy. I was a little girl with a knife at my throat, propped against a gravestone. I was tied in a chair, worms crawling on my legs. And at one point, I sank down, down, down further in a murky red lake, my feet tied to an anchor as I gasped for air. Every dream felt real, and each one was accompanied by a gurgling or screaming sound that seemed to echo in my room even after I opened my eyes.
And then, when I was just prepared to get up and call it quits, it all changed.
He arrived, his shorts and black T-shirt soaked and dripping. His eyes bulging from his sickeningly bloated face and his bulging limbs. He smelled of dry rot and mildew, his whole body blue and wet. He didn’t talk, just stood at the edge of my bed. Coughing up water, I cringed at the sight of him but also felt relieved. Finally. Proof, if you could call it that. Because I recognized him at once.
Anthony Ambridge, his blonde hair and blue eyes visible even through the distortion. And with the sight of him, I knew what I had known, what everyone should have known.
5B murdered him. Him and all the other children. And judging from Anthony’s face, it was not the peaceful death they say comes when you drown. It looked to me like his soul was tortured, and his body weary from the fight. Still, seeing him, I had a hunch of where he died. But what clues would be left after all this time?
“Help me help you,” I whimpered, calling out to the boy who was terrifying but also pitiful. I fought the urge to comfort him, to reach out and touch his tiny hand. To tell him I was sorry. To tell them all I was sorry. Before I could decide what to do though, a gurgling noise, a screeching noise, and an intense heat crowded around me. They stood, the four of them at the edge of my bed. For a moment, a weird peace fell over me.
And then it broke when she stood in front of them, the yellow girl with the indistinct face. The screeching noise threatened to paralyze me as I held my head. She came toward me, her red pigtails billowing as she pointed. As all of them closed in on me. I could feel their hands grabbing at me, their nails clawing. My skin burned from the pressure and from the scratches. There was no more patience left. They were going to hurt me. I was out of time.
I kicked and screamed, flinging myself from the bed. Their little hands pawed and grabbed at me, the screeching noise of yellow mixing with the gurgles and moans of the rest. Their warped presences dug deep into my soul, and I scampered to the door. I turned to see them coming at me, zombie-like creatures too real to be my imagination. I held my head against the piercing sound, dashing out the door as I added my own scream to the chorus of theirs.
When I found myself on the front lawn of the apartment building, holding my head as I lay sprawled on the lawn in my pajamas, I noticed my neighbor’s car. A younger man who usually travelled, he emerged from his door. I looked back, expecting to see the kids coming toward me. But there was nothing. I moaned and cried, looking like a deranged lunatic.
“I’ll call 911,” he yelled to me, looking alarmed.
“No, no, it’s fine,” I said “Please, don’t.” My hands shook. I needed to get it together or I would find myself locked away without an escape from the nightmares, from the beings, from the terrors.
“I’m fine. Just a nightmare. Sorry,” I added weakly, standing and brushing myself off. I tried not to let him see my shaking hands.
I breathed in and out. After what felt like forever, he went back inside, eyeing me suspiciously. I stared at the apartment, knowing I couldn’t go back in. Knowing I needed to do something. I pulled on my hair, feeling like a crazy person. Anthony Ambridge was clearly one of the victims. How had the police missed it? Should I go report him? But what evidence did I have? I needed evidence, and certainly dredging the lake for clues was out of my hands. I needed to figure out who the others were, and where they were. I needed to make it stop. For 5B, for me. For the kids.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I turned, abandoning my apartment and the fact that I was in my pajamas. I headed toward the end of the street, thinking about all that had been lost. About all the suffering the kids had endured. And wondering how long a sane person could handle such madness before it was all over.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Iknew I needed to get to 5B, whatever it took. Things were escalating, but Anna was also keeping an eye on me. I was running out of time. And after what I’d found at the library, I knew what I had to do.
I went about my duties as normal on floor two. The whole time, I kept picturing her face, her missing eye, the story about how her parents were distraught. They’d never known what happened to her. She couldn’t be at peace. But even if I didn’t have sound evidence, I had a starting point.
Marsha Waters. It was the little girl I came across in the missing children reports I combed through that jumped out at me. Red. The missing eye, the red hair. The age. It all seemed right. She’d disappeared at the age of eleven walking home from school near Ambridge Farms.
When I saw Roxy come back from break, I beelined for mine. I wandered up the stairs, hoping I’d manage to find an opening.
But on the stairwell, Anna was standing with her arms crossed as if she were on guard already. She stared at me, her face scowling.
“Where are you going, Jessica?”
“I . . . I just . . .”
“I heard about your escapade at your apartment last night. Sounds to me like there’s a lot going on in that pretty head of yours. I’m disappointed, Jessica. I thought you would be different. I thought you’d be professional and focused. It seems like you might be losing it, which is dangerous for everyone.”
I stood a few stairs down from her. She stepped down another one, her eyes staring at me.
“I just want to check in on 5B. I think I know what’s going on with him. I found some things—” I rambled on, suddenly needing to unburden myself. “And if I could just get the police to believe me,”
“Stop,” she shouted, stepping down so she was staring right into my eyes. “You need to leave it all be.”
I stood tall, for the first time in a long time. “What the hell are you hiding? Why don’t you want me figuring out what’s going on with him?”
“Because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what he did. We’re tired of you snooping around. You’re playing a dangerous game. Consider yourself warned.”
I could see her jaw moving as her teeth clenched. Anger radiated from her. I stared, questioningly, wanting so badly to uncover all of the secrets but also thinking about the janitor and what secrets he knew. Was it worth it?
“We know you snooped in his files. We know you’ve been asking a lot of questions. Stay out of it. Okay? We know more about him than you. There’s no point in dredging up the past.”
“Does this have something to do with the experimental treatment? You didn’t make him better, did you? You made it worse. It’s Redwood’s fault he is the way he is.”
She roared now, slamming her hand on the banister by the stairs. “You can’t make someone who is a lost cause already any worse. And who cares if we did? It’s not like he has anyone to care about him. It’s not like his donor’s still paying his way. Do you realize that? We’ve been housing him here for free for the past year. The donor signed off on him. Do you think we’d all have jobs if we let that kind of thing go?”
“That doesn’t mean you can experiment on him like he’s some creature. I need to talk to him. He did some horrible things, Anna. I need to talk to him so I can get rest for the families . . .”
She grabbed my wrist, an icy hand with sharp fingernails grinding into it.
“You will do no such thing. Walk your ass back to floor two, or so help me, you won’t like what happens. You’re not calling the shots here. And whether 5B did or didn’t do something, it doesn’t matter. He’s our property now to do with as we please. I suggest you remember that.”
She practically flung me down the stairs. I stood on the landing for a long mo
ment, two choices spread before me. I could comply and return to my job, or I could move forward to get the answers I needed.
Get out while you can.
The words echoed in my brain as if they were being shouted down the stairwell. I needed to be smart. Maybe I could solve it without seeing him. After all, what would he really tell me? I just needed more to give to the police. Once they learned I was telling the truth, they’d have to show up. They’d have to believe me about 5B, but about everything else too. I would go from villain to hero if I played my cards right. I turned and walked toward the door.
“It’s a lost cause, Jessica.”
“What is?” I asked, turning to look at her.
“All of it.” And with that, she went back to floor five to guard her territory and her secrets. Still, she’d forgotten one detail.
The dead still talked, and I was able to listen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ileaned against the stone wall outside of Redwood, the break a temporary reprieve from the insanity, fear, and dread that swirled inside. Looking out into the tree covered grounds, I rubbed my hands on my arms. The darkness of the forest around Redwood filled me with a claustrophobic dread. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to go back inside.
I sunk to the ground, the cold cement of the sidewalk seeping through my pants as I steadied my breathing and considered all that had happened. I was getting closer to breaking the code: the code of 5B, of Redwood, of everything. It would all come tumbling down soon. The only question left was: would I still be standing?
I looked down and saw my shaking hands, which had become my hallmark these days. I inhaled the cold night air deeply, looking out again into the solemn distance. How many had perished here? How many secrets still haunted these grounds? As if in answer, I heard footsteps from the right. The crunching of the ground caused me to turn my head, wondering who had followed me out. Dreading what I would see, in truth.
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