The Shuttered Ward

by Jennifer Rose McMahon

I continued. “Why do you think that is?”

  He shifted to turn toward me better. “I don’t know,” he started. “You always push me away, I guess.”

  I closed my eyes to avoid seeing his face. “I do? I don’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m fine. I think it was probably a good thing anyway. It allowed us to stay close friends, you know, like we never had to be awkward or uncomfortable around each other.”

  “That’s true.” I looked at him again, grateful he appreciated our friendship as much as I did.

  My eyes dropped slightly and landed on his mouth. A thrill shot through me as I imagined touching it with mine. And what it would feel like to kiss him. I tore my gaze away again in an instant before he caught me.

  Too late.

  He took a short inhale, pulling his bottom lip in. It glistened as he released it. His eyes held mine in a strong hold.

  “Braden,” I whispered in a final attempt of resistance.

  And at the sound of his name, he reached up and touched the side of my face. He pushed his fingers through my hair and pulled me closer, leaning in to me.

  “Grace.” My name moved from his mouth and drew me into him.

  His breath warmed my lips as he hovered just out of reach, as if waiting for a final invitation.

  I couldn’t hold back another second. As I reached my hand around his neck, he pulled me closer and his warm lips touched mine.

  At first, he was gentle and reserved. He kissed me softly as if trying not to scare me off. But I wanted more. I wanted him to give himself to me fully, so I pulled tighter on his neck.

  His entire body responded to my request. He inched closer and kissed me the way he had always intended to. With passion, without holding back. And I loved it. My mind swam in bliss from the thrill of his mouth.

  “Grace!” Kaitlin’s voice shattered my mind into pieces. “Throw down the bottle,” she called up to us.

  Braden pulled away, panting. Our gazes locked. “Oh my God.”

  Smiling, I fumbled through his backpack without breaking eye contact.

  I leaned and dangled the bottle out of the window. Kaitlin reached up for it. It was obvious she could tell by the look on my face. Immediately.

  Her eyes widened as her jaw dropped open.

  My grin confirmed her knowledge, as she grabbed the bottle and ran over to Nick. The two of them headed back toward the trees, glancing over their shoulders at the hut in total disbelief.

  I turned back to Braden with a smile on my face.

  “Jerks,” I said.

  “Terrible timing.” He smiled. And before I could say another word, he pulled me into his arms again. “Grace.” My name poured from his lips as I became lost in his safe embrace.

  Kaitlin pinched my arm a million times in disbelief on the walk back to her house. I barely felt it, though. My mind was too wrapped up in Braden. I watched him walking ahead of us with Nick, and I regretted all the time I’d lost with him. But at least something was happening now. And it felt good.

  “Who wants DQ?” Nick called. “Ethan’s closing tonight. He can get us whatever we want.”

  “Yes,” we replied in unison.

  Kaitlin grabbed onto my arm. “I can’t leave, though. If I get caught, my mom will be pissed.”

  True. Walking the neighborhood was one thing. But driving away was quite another. And we didn’t want to piss Cheryl off. She was the only adult who had our backs at this point.

  I called out, “We can’t leave, though. Cheryl will kill us.”

  Braden slowed the pace with Nick, and we caught up to them.

  “We’ll bring it back then,” he said. “What do you want?”

  I smiled knowing he was buying more time with me.

  “Oreo Blizzard, of course,” I replied.

  “Make that two,” Kaitlin added.

  They picked up their pace, moving well ahead of us, and were pulling away in Braden’s car just as we reached the house. We fumbled at the gate, trying to open it without making too much noise. Climbing over the fence from the outside was near impossible since the crossbeams were only on the inside.

  Wood creaked as the gate resisted our efforts. Inch by inch, we finally pressed it open but only to cringe at the high-pitched squeak of the hinges. We crouched to stifle our nervous laughter before squeezing ourselves through the narrow opening.

  “How are we gonna get Braden and Nick through?” Kaitlin whispered.

  “We’ll open it a little more in a few minutes,” I said. “Just in case Cheryl’s getting suspicious.”

  We snuck to the far side of the back yard where the lawn swing was and pulled some chairs close to it.

  “Can we light the fire pit?” I asked.

  Kaitlin hesitated. “I don’t know. It might generate too much attention. Maybe we should just light some of the mosquito lanterns.”

  She went into the shed and pulled out a box of long matches and small tealight candles. We fumbled with the plastic lanterns, putting new candles in them, then lighting them. Placing them around the sitting area cast a warm glow, and Kaitlin shot a judging glance at me.

  “Too obvious?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Romantic candlelight.” She laughed.

  “Shut up!” I punched her arm and then pushed her.

  She pushed back and teased me with her taunting.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You and Braden.” Her eyes went wide. “Finally!”

  “Well, what about you and Nick? What the hell happened with you guys?”

  The sound of Braden’s car pulled up alongside the fence, and their hushed voices mixed with the shutting doors. Our shoulders flinched as if to buffer the noise, and we ran for the gate. Pulling the door a little farther open, we waved for the boys to follow us quietly.

  Braden held the tray with the four blizzards, and Nick carried the backpack over his shoulder.

  “Just don’t wake my mom,” Kaitlin hushed. “She’s already freaked out today.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe you guys actually went back to the asylum,” Nick interjected. “What were you thinking?” His judgmental tone irked me.

  “We’re going back again. Like, soon,” I said in defense, staring into the flame of one of the candles.

  “Wait,” Braden interjected. “You’re going back? Why?”

  His annoyed tone hit me in the gut. It held a level of concern that scared me. But there was no way I wouldn’t go back there. It had already planted itself deep within my mind, and I could think of nothing else. The only way to stop it’s incessant stalking was to go back and face it.

  “There’s something about that place, Braden,” I said. “Like there’s something that needs to be found. Or discovered. I don’t know.” My words confused even me.

  His eyebrows pulled together. “I mean, it’s cool. Yeah. But I don’t get why you need to go back so soon.”

  I poked a twig into the flame of a candle. “There’s just so much mystery around it.”

  “Yeah, like the kid who killed his parents,” Nick blurted out.

  Braden dropped the tray of Blizzards onto the table with a huff.

  My focus turned to Nick and I hung on his words, hoping for more information.

  “I read about that boy, too,” I said. “What else do you know about him?” Then I turned back to Braden. “What’s he talking about?”

  Braden handed me my Blizzard. “It’s just some story Tom told us at the asylum. When we were trying to find you in the locked ward.”

  “The kid was found at the cliffs of the quarry,” Nick said. “He jumped but survived. When they went to get his parents, they found his dad with a hammer in the back of his skull and his mother stabbed to death in the kitchen.”

  “Jesus,” Kaitlin whispered.

  We knew about the boy from our research but the article I had read didn’t share such gruesome details.

  “They kept him in the ward at the back,” he continued. �
��The one with the high fencing. For the criminally insane.”

  I remembered the building at the far side of the grounds. Ward B.

  “The weird part was,” Braden added, “that the kid had no memory of the event. He had no idea what had happened. So, question was, did he truly have no memory of it or was he lying?”

  “The kid did it,” Nick blurted. “He was just a genius, keeping everyone uncertain.”

  “Maybe he was innocent,” Braden added. “You gotta wonder how many people were trapped in there, wrongfully. Probably a lot.”

  Kaitlin scratched her arms like she had a rash and squeezed her eyes shut.

  My eyes squinted in concentration, then closed as well, as I imagined the details of the story.

  Then, a bright flash went off in my head. The boy’s face.

  It still had blood smears on it, with his dirty hair strewn in every direction, but his eyes remained calm. Focused. He appeared content.

  My eyes burst open as I gasped from the shock of the image.

  They connected with Kaitlin’s as she stared into my face with similar fear. She’d seen the same image.

  Then she whispered to me. “Do we know him?”

  Chapter 16

  There was no way we could know that boy from Ward B. The event was from decades earlier, long before we were even born. But Kaitlin saw it too. His face had flashed through our minds at the same time. Our reactions matched each other perfectly, and we knew what we’d seen. It was like we were being haunted. Haunted by the history of the asylum.

  But it was more than that. And the need to know controlled my every thought.

  “We’re going back tomorrow,” I said out loud, setting the plan in stone.

  Kaitlin choked on her ice cream, but then she nodded in agreement.

  Braden shoved his spoon into his cup and slammed it onto the table. “Shit.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “I’ve never met two more stubborn people.” His shifted his weight from one foot to another, then grabbed his ice cream again. “If you’re going back, then I’m going, too.” He huffed. “Not a chance I’m gonna just wait around for another distress call. That place has a weird effect on you guys.”

  “You’ve all lost your minds,” Nick interjected, blowing a ring of vapor into the middle of us all. “But what the hell. I’ll go too.”

  Braden opened his wallet and pulled a business card out of the billfold. “I’ll text Tom. Let him know we’re coming. Maybe he can be helpful. You know, be our guide.”

  I cringed at the thought of them coming with us. Braden was being over-protective and all he would try to do was stop me from getting into the ward again, or whatever else I decided to do.

  “Thanks, guys, but you don’t have to do that,” I argued. “We’ll be more careful this time.”

  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized so much of it was out of our control. Getting locked in the ward was a random coincidence, but being drawn in there by Emma, that was not.

  I licked my spoon in thought. Maybe it was safer to have the guys come with us, even if it meant they’d be pains in the asses. Then, as I glanced over at Kaitlin to see what she thought, the worry lines in her forehead screamed that she wanted them to come.

  “No, seriously,” Braden started. “You can’t go there alone. Look what almost happened when…”

  I cut him off. “It’s okay. You can come,” I said. As the words left my mouth, my gut released its tight knot. “Thanks.”

  But now I had a new layer of worry. I had to worry about their safety too. They could be walking into something that could grab hold of them as well. There was just no way to know.

  Kaitlin and I were tapping into something much bigger than Braden and Nick’s minds could handle. They had no idea what was growing in us.

  It was something unnerving.

  Something sinister.

  The time between Braden and Nick leaving and then waking up to the bright glare of morning sun felt like seconds rather than hours. Twelve hours to be exact. It was almost noon, and my mind was still a shattered mess. Sleep didn’t work at calming my thoughts. Rest didn’t cut it. I needed something stronger.

  “You awake?” I whispered, reaching for my phone.

  Kaitlin squirmed in resistance to my voice.

  I checked my messages and opened Braden’s Snap.

  “Three o’clock, right?” it said across the top half of his face.

  “Yup.” I snapped back a pic of the ceiling, hiding my morning face.

  “Shit,” I mumbled as I rolled off the edge of the bed. “They’ll be here at three.”

  I still had second thoughts about them coming at all. It just seemed like something Kaitlin and I should do on our own.

  Kaitlin’s eyes burst open.

  “Shit!” she squealed and sat straight up.

  She reached for the side of her head and swayed like she was dizzy. Clearly, half-a-days sleep didn’t do the trick for her either.

  “Don’t worry. It’s only twelve.” I searched around the room, on the shelves and in the closet. “I think we should be more prepared this time, like bring supplies and tools. At least a good screwdriver. And flashlights. Mace. And…”

  Kaitlin squinted as if to see me more clearly. “Are you serious?”

  “Completely.”

  She groaned in resistance to my enthusiasm. “Can I at least have coffee first?”

  I chuckled and then shrugged my shoulders. Maybe I was acting a little extreme, a little too Indiana Jones, but my focus was clear. I wanted to be prepared at the asylum this time. I refused to be trapped like a prisoner or haunted like a skittish animal. I planned to be ready for whatever came our way.

  “Didn’t Braden say he was gonna contact Tom?” Kaitlin added. “If Tom’s there, we’ll be able to get into places without having to break in. No screwdrivers required. And he’ll keep us safe, I bet. He seems to know every inch of the place. It’ll be better this time. I can tell.”

  She made a good point. Maybe having Braden involved didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. Contacting Tom had been a good call since having more than just two people seemed pretty rational.

  “And maybe we won’t get trapped in one the wards this time,” I snarked. “That would be cool.”

  I thought about what else Tom might be helpful with. Maybe he would have more details about the boy from Ward B. I couldn’t shake that story, and it only muddied the images and feelings that already confused the shit out of me. And maybe Tom might know something about Emma Grangley. A knot formed in my throat. Or maybe even my father.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized we needed Tom. I silently praised Braden’s forward thinking and his protective nature.

  “Do you think Tom might know anything about…” I stumbled on my words. “You know, like, Emma. Or maybe my dad?”

  Kaitlin pulled a pillow into her chest. “Holy crap,” she gasped. “Maybe.”

  I glanced at my phone again. Braden hadn’t opened my snap yet, so I double snapped him.

  “Did you get in touch with Tom?” I typed over a pic of Kaitlin’s feet.

  I grabbed her brush and yanked it through my hair. “Nope. Not happening.” I tugged harder. “I need to take a shower.”

  Kaitlin dragged herself off her huge bed, then hobbled into the hall. She came back with a fresh towel and said, “You go upstairs. I’ll use the one in my parents’ room. Cheryl’s at work already and my dad won’t be back until tomorrow.” She dug in her closet and pulled out fresh clothes for me to choose from.

  Heading into the bathroom, I looked forward to washing the past twenty-four hours off me. Kind of like preparation for the next events that awaited us.

  After adjusting the temperature to the hottest setting just below scalding, I climbed in and let the water rinse over my hair and face. My eyes closed as my head tipped back, enjoying the escape of its trickling warmth. And then, with a flash, I jolted and closed my eyes tightly. Bright light blinded
me at first but then the edges of an image formed in my head. It looked like a black and white shot at a first, like a transparent x-ray, but then a distinct face jumped closer and I yelped. Her face pushed right up to mine and I cowered as Emma stared straight into my soul.

  My eyes shot open, and water streamed into them. I squinted and rubbed to clear my vision, looking all around me, ignoring the sting. Her face was still vivid in my mind, and she called to me. My heart pounded in my chest as I held the walls of the shower and gasped for air.

  A vibration yanked my attention to my phone. It lit up on the sink, just within reach.

  I grabbed the edge of my towel to dry my hand, then pressed the button to light up the screen. Braden snapped. I opened it and droplets fell from my arm and fingers, blurring the visibility.

  “Shit,” I mumbled, swiping the water off with my towel.

  I read his snap through the streaks.

  “K. Tom will meet us there.” His words glowed against the background of his feet.

  Okay. Everything was still normal. Braden was coming, and Tom would be there. I blinked again to remove the remains of Emma’s face from my eyes. Her image had been so vivid, like she was in the room with me. My pounding heart proved her close proximity remained.

  Goosebumps lifted on my arms. I pulled back into the hot shower and wet my hair again, this time keeping my eyes wide open.

  My thoughts raced around what might happen at the asylum this time. It seemed good Tom would be there, but the knot in my stomach hinted otherwise. We had no idea who he was. He just seemed trustworthy and knowledgeable, but we had no proof. But seriously, who would hang out at an abandoned asylum that much? He had to have an element of weird in him. No doubt about that. Or maybe he was just as he said, intrigued like the rest of us.

  I shampooed in a hurry, ready to get moving with the next part of the day. As I rinsed the suds, another flash shattered my peace. Emma’s voice screamed in my mind. The sound of her shrieks tore at my brain like she was being tortured. Terror rang from her voice and I covered my ears with my hands. The sound moved through unhindered and its intensity compounded within me. I crouched to escape the horror she whipped through me.