My eyes widened. He saw things, too? A sixth sense maybe, like mine. It was new to me since my accident, but maybe it was something he’d passed down to me.
My mother was afraid of such things, but I wasn’t. I was more awake than ever with a sharp clarity that saw through her distorted web.
“What did he see? Mom, tell me.”
She continued to wring her hands in her lap as she considered her words.
“He said he had to protect you. That you would be taken from him.” She wiped at her nose. “He said he could see you suffering, trying to break out of a prison of some kind.”
My spine straightened as she continued.
“His obsession about you being taken, being sent away, grew wilder every day. He wouldn’t let people near you or even look at you. We had to have him sectioned before he had a chance to actually harm you.” She sniffled. “You were still only an infant. Foster was mentally ill.”
My mind exploded with the new knowledge of my father, including hearing his name. His intense protection surrounded me and lived on deep within my soul. He had wanted to protect me with all of his being, he’d done whatever was in his power to do so. But he’d lost. And he’d died believing he had let me down. The thought of it killed me inside.
“Foster.” I spoke his name just to hear it again. “Do you think he was mentally ill? Or was he just desperate to protect me from something that frightened him? Something only he knew?”
The question was real. Mental illness was grossly misunderstood, even twenty years ago.
“Well, what in God’s name could he have been talking about? It was all gibberish,” she said.
In God’s name? Had she had the church involved with sectioning him? How else could she have accomplished having him locked up in a mental hospital? My jaw tightened enough to crush granite.
“How did he die?” I asked through my clenched teeth.
She didn’t answer, nor did she look up.
“How did he die?” I repeated, louder this time.
“He hung himself.”
Heavy sadness weighed down on me, drooping my shoulders and filling my neck. It was the exact same feeling I got at the asylum, more than once. I reached for my throat, rubbing it self-consciously.
My father had hung himself.
I strained to swallow, but the pressure in my neck made it impossible. My throat was too tight.
And Emma Grangley… She had hung herself too.
Tension built in my head as I struggled to take a full breath. It felt like I was being strangled by a noose.
I had to get out of there. I had to get away from my mother’s twisted reality.
Pushing myself off the armchair, I stumbled toward my room, half-keeled over. Shallow breaths left me panting and searching for fresh air.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked, following me down the hall to my room.
“I’m getting out of here,” I wheezed.
I grabbed my phone and jacket before pushing past her out of my bedroom door.
“You have to stay here,” she demanded. “I’m calling your doctor.” She scrolled through her phone with shaking hands.
It rang until the answering service picked up, then she ended the call. Within a second, she dialed Kaitlin’s mom.
I shook my head in disgust, moving toward the front door. The rage inside me had built up enough energy to take me to Kaitlin’s on foot. And I’d likely get there fast, too
“Cheryl.” Mom’s voice hit at the back of my head. “Grace is out of control. I need your help.” Her panicked tone would easily frighten Kaitlin’s mom, so I texted Kaitlin immediately to warn her as I flew out the front door. Mom’s voice trailed behind me as if trying to get through to me. “She’s behaving erratically and is delusional. I think she’s on her way to your house. She’ll upset Kaitlin, too, if you let her in. Cheryl! Are you listening?”
There was a good chance Kaitlin had already interrupted the phone call, pulling her mother’s attention away from my mom. That was good. Hopefully, Cheryl would see through my mother’s irrational angst and make her own decisions.
“Grace!” my mother called from where she stood on the porch.
I was already halfway down my street at a stride that carried me like the wind. My pounding heart set the pace, and I allowed the breeze to blow my hair back behind me.
“Grace!” Her voice grew more distant. “It’s all gibberish!”
The words shot my eyes open. Had she actually said that? I couldn’t be sure. It was difficult to hear her now, but I was fairly certain she’d said it. And it only sealed my conviction she was not the support I needed. She was the crazy one.
And right now, I needed rational.
I needed stable.
Before long, I pounded up Kaitlin’s front steps. The door flew open. Kaitlin’s mom reached for my shoulders, then pulled me into her. Her embrace choked me with emotion as I felt motherly compassion and understanding for the very first time. She trembled as she led me into the house, over to Kaitlin.
I stopped in my tracks when I saw Kaitlin. She sat on the floor by the fireplace, knees pulled to chest, and rocked. With a blank gaze, she hummed a quiet note as if trying to soothe herself.
My eyes jumped to her mom.
“She’s been like this since she got home,” her mother said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Then your mother called, and I…I just didn’t know what to say or what to think.” Her eyes searched mine for an answer. “What did you girls do? Where did you go? Did something happen?” Her questions flew in every direction.
I hurried to Kaitlin, then dropped down next to her. With my arm wrapped around her shoulders, I squeezed her.
“It’s okay, Kaitlin. I’m here,” I whispered. “We need to stay together. I won’t leave you until everything’s normal again.”
She blinked, lifting her gaze to mine. “Promise?”
“Yes.” I exhaled with relief.
She was responsive. But she was scared, just like me.
I turned to her mother. Making a quick decision, I told her everything.
From the very beginning, I described our visits to the asylum and our strange encounters. I told her of Tom. About Emma. Every detail of our exploration of the shuttered ward and the ghostly grounds.
“It’s what we love to do,” I added. “You know how we like to explore old, abandoned houses and historical cemeteries? Only this time, it was bigger than we could have ever imagined.”
Kaitlin’s mom nodded, listening patiently.
I continued, “But our heads…” I rubbed the side of my face. “I think our head injuries are playing tricks on us. The symptoms, you know, the savant symptoms the doctor told us about, like our brains are opening up to new things. I think it’s all related somehow.”
Her mother pressed her knuckles onto her lips in thought.
Kaitlin lifted her head slightly. “It’s true, Mom,” she mumbled. “Grace is right. It’s our minds playing tricks on us. It has to be.”
Tears streamed down her mother’s face as she came toward us. She wrapped her arms around the two of us, then buried her face next to Kaitlin’s.
“I’ve been so worried,” she murmured through sniffles. “The two of you have…changed. It has me so frightened, but the doctors keep telling me it’s normal.” She sat back and reached for Kaitlin. She pushed her hair away from her face, then tucked it behind her ear. Then she looked at me. “Kaitlin is better when you’re around. You two need to rest. Maybe I could take you to that yoga retreat in the Berkshires for a few days? To get you away from it all.”
Kaitlin shot up to full attention. “No,” she pleaded. And her eyes locked onto mine.
I held her gaze, knowing we couldn’t leave.
Knowing we had to go back.
Kaitlin’s mother backed away as if she’d been struck. She hadn’t expected such a forceful response from her daughter. Kaitlin had been practically mute since returning home from the asylum earlier i
n the day but now—now she was headstrong and adamant in her decisions.
I walked with Kaitlin to her room, twisting to see her mom. She just stood there, slumped shoulders, watching us walk away from her.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Edwards,” I said. “She just needs a break. We both do.” I watched her swipe at the tears that threatened to roll down her cheeks.
She nodded, retreating toward the couch. Her limp body dropped into it. She lifted her phone close to her face, squinting to see the screen clearly.
Before long, I heard her hushed voice whispering about post-concussion syndrome and exhaustion.
“She’s telling my dad,” Kaitlin cringed. “Thank God he’s out of town.”
I wondered how her father would react to all of this. He’d probably think it was female troubles and brush it away. I supposed that wasn’t so bad right now.
I texted my mom to tell her I was sleeping over Kaitlin’s. There was no way I was going home at that point. I couldn’t even imagine going home the next day, either. But for now, keeping her at a good distance was my goal.
“Are you okay?” I climbed onto Kaitlin’s bed with her, then wrapped myself around her long, body-length pillow.
She propped herself onto her other furry pillows with a tired grin. “Yeah. I’m good,” she said. “Minus the trauma of getting locked in an abandoned insane asylum. Oh, and freaky hallucinations following me around, even here.”
“Hallucinations?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I think I keep seeing things from the ward. Like stupid things. The peeling paint on the walls. The musty smells. The creepy light coming through the windows. And just, the feelings, you know.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “I’m having weird flashbacks, too. Like, more than flashbacks. It’s so real.”
We must have been more traumatized from being trapped in the ward than I had realized. It was terrifying on so many levels. The feeling of not being able to get out was even worse than the haunting vision of Emma and the scary halls. It was a feeling of being defenseless, like a tortured prisoner.
“Well, we can’t both be going crazy,” she said. “So, it’s obviously something to do with our accident. My mom’s right. My mom’s right. It must be exhaustion.”
“Definitely.” I paused. “I guess.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “You have another explanation?”
“My mom told me some pretty serious shit about my dad. I don’t know if it’s connected in any way. But it’s weird. The timing.”
I drew in a deep breath, then told Kaitlin about what happened to my father. She barely took a breath through the entire story. By the end, she was floored.
“Grace. I’m so sorry,” she choked through her disbelief. “I can’t believe it. How could she not have told you sooner?” She pulled her pillow closer, as if trying to wrap her mind around the story. “No wonder it felt so strange there. It’s all connected somehow.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I agreed. “And I need to figure out how. Or what.”
“It all started with the accident,” Kaitlin mumbled. She pinched her eyebrows together with her fingers as she thought. “We need to remember more.” She strained. “Like the numbers. Remember the numbers that kept flashing?”
“Yes,” I burst out. “235236235236.” I watched the numbers move through my mind again like a digital ticker.
Kaitlin closed her eyes. “And there was more. A clock. I keep seeing it whenever there’s a flash of light.”
I closed my eyes to remember the flashbacks from the scene of the accident. As I searched my memory of all of it, the image of a clock jumped into my mind.
“I see it, too! I remember,” I exclaimed. “An old clock like on a town hall or some important building. Its black hands were clear as day. It was…”
Kaitlin’s voice joined mine in that exact moment.
“Four-thirty,” we said in unison.
We jumped back from each other.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
“Holy shit.” Kaitlin rubbed her eyes, shoving her hands back through her hair.
I tucked my hands into my jacket pockets and squeezed myself, trying to keep from freaking out. My right hand pressed against a crinkled piece of paper, and I grabbed onto it. Pulling slowly, I removed the paper from my pocket. As soon as I saw what it was, I threw it on the bed between us.
It popped open from its hasty folds, and the words at the top shot out at us. “MEDICAL HISTORY”. My spine stiffened as I bent my head for a better look. Blotched ink confirmed what I knew we were looking at. Filled onto the top line was her name. Emma Grangley.
I had shoved her medical record into my pocket when Braden burst into the locked ward to get us out. And now, here it was, right in front of us.
“Read the rest of it,” Kaitlin said. “There was more.”
I looked at her like she was nuts. I didn’t even want to touch it, let alone read it.
I stared blankly at the paper, knowing I had no choice.
Propping it open, I spread it out on the blankets so we could both see it.
After the diagnosis and archaic ‘prescriptives,’ including hydro-therapy and orbital lobotomy, there was a large stamp at the bottom. It covered several lines of additional information with its capital letters that read ‘DECEASED’.
Nausea washed through me as I strained to read the messy scrawl written beneath the stamp.
I spoke the words out loud, each one catching in my throat. “Deceased. Felon of herself. Cause of death, unvirtuous, asphyxiation, hanged by the neck.” I grimaced at the callous phrases. “They judged her even in her death.” My disgust oozed from every syllable, and I focused back on the sheet to read more. “Date, 9 July 1920. Time of death, 4:30.”
My eyes shot up to Kaitlin’s.
Four-thirty? The numbers exploded in my head.
The clock.
The old clock tower on the chapel. At the asylum. It was the same clock that flashed in our minds at the accident, though its image was much newer in the vision. It burst into my mind, beaming its face at me, calling out the time from the shuttered corners of my memories.
Four-thirty.
Chapter 14
I squeezed the long pillow, pushing myself into the corner of the bed against the wall. Emma Grangley’s death notice sat in the middle of the blankets as Kaitlin and I averted our eyes. Flashes of the asylum clock tower continued to glare in my mind. Four-thirty. It was the time of her death. The clock tower tolled the harrowing moment, forever in our brains.
“It’s like Emma wanted us to know she existed,” Kaitlin mumbled.
“Stop. That’s creepy.” But I knew she right. Somehow, Emma had reached out to us. Her untimely death left her soul unsettled, wandering the asylum. Lost. “Do you think she haunts the place?’
“Yup.” Kaitlin turned her head from Emma’s medical document.
I thought about the visions of Emma we’d seen at the asylum. Her hanging. Walking into the doctor’s office in the ward. Leading us to her medical information.
“I don’t know. It seems more than that,” I wondered. “Because it wasn’t just at the asylum. It was at the accident that we first saw evidence of her. The clock tower.” I glanced at Emma’s medical paper for a brief second, to be sure it was still there. “It’s like she made first contact with us in that moment. Both of us.”
“You’re freaking me out.” Kaitlin’s voice shook, and she jumped off the bed. “It has to be just a bizarre coincidence.”
“Seriously?” I glanced at her through drooping eyes. This was more than a coincidence. “And what about the numbers? There has to be some significance to the numbers. They’re connected to her in some way. Like she’s trying to tell us something.”
“No.” Kaitlin stepped to the far corner of the room, shaking her head. “Stop. I can’t. This is getting too weird. Like, it’s moving out of control, like I’m losing my mind. Can we please talk about something else?�
� Her voice tightened.
“You know we have to go back, right?” My direct tone left no other option.
“Don’t say that,” she pleaded. “I can’t handle that right now. Please.”
“Fine,” I agreed, knowing we needed a break from all of this. “But in the morning, we need to make a plan. Deal?”
“Whatever.” Her eyes rolled as she stepped closer to the bed. “Put that away for now.” She pointed to Emma’s paper. “I can smell the musk of the ward off it.”
A familiar chill jolted through me. I smelled it, too. The paper carried a powerful link to the ward. Not only the smell, but emotions too. Feelings of terror, abuse, entrapment, violation—they oozed from the paper, sickening my soul with their foul poison.
I folded the paper, touching it as little as possible, then pushed it into my pocket. Then, feeling its presence so close to my body, I whipped my jacket off and threw it into the corner of the room. Then Kaitlin covered it with a blanket. Then a pillow. She grabbed her square bottle of perfume, misting the area around the heap.
“I think we’re good now.” I chuckled weakly.
“If we go back, we need to return that thing,” she whispered. “I don’t want it anymore.”
“Same,” I agreed. “It belongs there, anyway. Sort of like a memorial to her memory.”
“Okay, enough,” Kaitlin interjected. “We’re not talking anymore about this right now. I need a break.” She threw one more pillow at the pile in the corner.
My phone buzzed, and I flipped it over to check. Braden’s name lit up.
What r u up to tonight
“Braden wants to know what we’re doing.” I smirked at Kaitlin with a new sparkle in my eyes.
“My mother will never let us out tonight,” Kaitlin exclaimed. “She’s way too freaked out. Like, she thinks this is a medical emergency. And rest is the only thing that will fix it. I literally know we’re trapped in here for the night.”
I typed back.
At Kaitlin’s
Ellipses rolled at the bottom right away as he typed back.
Wanna hang out I’m still with Nick
The Shuttered Ward Page 12