Burning soap streamed into my eyes, forcing them shut again. I rocked under the stream of water, praying for the assault to end.
Body shuddering, I fell against the edge of the shower door with a bang. Emma grabbed at me. Clawing at my arms—desperate to be saved. I pulled to get away from her grasp.
“Get away from me,” I screamed, swiping at the air.
What the hell did she want from me? I didn’t know how to help her.
“Kaitlin!” I struggled to clear the shampoo from my eyes. “Kaitlin!”
My eyes refused to open against the stinging shampoo, and more flashes of Emma’s twisted face taunted me. Her desperation clung in my chest, begging for my help, and finally, I stopped struggling. Instead, I stared into her searching eyes. I allowed her into my soul, and she allowed me into hers.
Her story poured into me, forcing my eyes open against the burning sensation. Her frantic thoughts continued to race through mine. Someone was after her as if they wanted to harm her. They used their power against her, and she had no defense. She needed me.
Then, a loud pounding on the door made me nearly jump out of my skin. “Let me in,” Kaitlin yelled, smashing with rapid bangs. “Open the door!”
I fumbled on the doorknob with my shaking, wet hand as she screamed for me.
“Grace,” she shrieked. Her terror-stricken voice shot more dread through my quaking body. “It’s Emma! Stop her,” she shouted, clawing at the door. “She won’t get out of my head!”
Kaitlin fell into the bathroom as her weight pushed against the opening door. Her cold, wet hair flew in every direction, and she landed on the mat, panting. Her towel barely held on as her body shook with massive quakes.
I grabbed for my towel and stepped closer to her, ready to help, but then froze. The after-images of Emma were still burned into my retinas. She was still there. Still…here.
“Do you still feel her?” I whispered.
Kaitlin’s hands covered her face. “Yes,” she whimpered.
I reached for Kaitlin’s shoulders, then pushed to get her to sit up. “Look at me,” I said. “She’s here with us for a reason. We can’t be afraid of her.”
My own words surprised me. Every nerve in my body feared the sight of her. I’d do anything to erase her from my mind. But that was impossible now. She was in there, fully, and needed our help.
Kaitlin refused to open her eyes. “It’s so real. It’s like she’s here,” she whimpered.
“I know.” I pulled her up more. “Come on. Let’s keep getting ready. Let’s show her that we are coming back for her. We need to stop resisting and let her lead us. It makes sense.”
I had no idea why I wanted to let Emma in. It could be the same as leaving the portal of a Ouija board open and allowing the demons in. Disastrous. And the idea of her in our heads was terrifying. But somehow, it didn’t feel like she was there to harm us. It was more like she was reaching out to us for help. And deep within me, I wanted to help her. I had to. It was the only thing that mattered now.
Kaitlin opened her eyes. “What happened to your arms?”
“What do you mean?” I looked down and gasped. Red streaks covered both arms, like scratches. “Shit. She was reaching for me. Grabbing at me.”
Kaitlin’s head shook like she didn’t want to hear any more. “What’s happening to us?” She wiped at her eyes. “Are we going crazy?”
“At exactly the same time?” I replied. “Doubt it.”
It was possible I scratched myself when the shampoo was in my eyes, but really, I was convinced it was Emma.
“It’s something else, Kaitlin,” I added. “Something to do with our accident. Or the ward. Or both. I don’t know. But I think we’re about to find out.”
My phone buzzed again.
Braden’s text flashed on my screen.
on our way
I read it out loud. Had that much time passed already?
“They’re going to think we’re crazy,” she mumbled.
“I know. It doesn’t matter. They already do.”
We scrambled down the stairs on our race toward her room to get ready.
Then, I added, “And that’s why we’re not going to tell them about this part.”
Chapter 17
Kaitlin’s mom had left a cute note on the kitchen counter next to bagels and strawberries. It told us to stay at the house and rest. It also asked for me to be sure to text my mom so she’d know what I was up to for the day.
We rolled our eyes at each other, grabbed coffee and bagels, and went to sit on the front stoop. Gray overcast shielded us from the sun and added a slight chill to the air, matching our moods to perfection.
I tore off a chunk of bagel and put it in my mouth. When I nearly choked on it, I placed the rest aside. My appetite had shut down completely.
“I can’t eat,” I grumbled to Kaitlin. “My mind’s racing faster than ever. I can’t stop it.” I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. “And the numbers. They keep flashing. And the hands on the clock tower just keep spinning. I need it to stop.”
“It will. It has to.” She took a large gulp of coffee and choked from the scald as it burned all the way down her throat. “Shit.” She coughed. “We need to end it today. At the ward.” She watched for Braden’s car. “Whatever happens today, we need to face it. To end it.”
I pulled back from her in surprise. I hadn’t expected her to be so brave about the situation. About confronting it. We had no idea what we were walking into. But she was understood, we either had to end it now or be tormented forever.
But I couldn’t help but feel like we were walking into something we knew nothing about. Something more powerful than anything we knew possible.
“There they are,” she said as she hopped to her feet.
Braden pulled up, and Nick stuck his head out the window.
“Ready for ghost hunting?” he teased.
Little did he know he was as close to the truth as he could get.
“Ready!” Kaitlin called as we raced down the front walk.
Then I remembered my jacket. I ran back into the house to grab it from under the pile in Kaitlin’s room. Replacing my hoodie with it felt like reconnecting with a missing part of me.
I hurried down the walkway, then jumped into the car. Pressing my hand into my pocket, I felt Emma’s paper safe within. In relief, I flipped my head down and gathered my hair into a messy bun. I lifted it again, then tied my hairband around it. Braden’s eyes were on me, and I smiled in response to his unexpected stare.
“You look good today,” he said with a half smirk.
Nick turned to him with a scowl. “Aww thanks, sweetie.”
Braden glared at him. “I mean, you guys look better. Like, rested.”
“Yeah,” Kaitlin interjected. “We slept for practically twelve hours. We better look rested.” She glanced at me, knowing it was a load of crap. We’d never been more unrested in our lives, just teetering on the edge of our sanity.
I shook my head in a subtle motion as I thought about the irony. Here we were, barely holding on to our sanity after brain trauma, and on our way to visit an abandoned insane asylum. Were we nuts? It was like we were looking for trouble.
But we couldn’t help ourselves.
The pull of the asylum was stronger than we were, and we couldn’t resist it. We’d always had the curiosity to explore old, abandoned places. It was our passion. And finally it was clear that those adventures were only priming us for the big one. For this, now.
“Tom’s gonna meet us there,” Braden added. “He said he can show us another building and answer any questions. He was scheduled to be there for a maintenance shift anyway.”
“I want to hear more about the dude who murdered his parents,” Nick stated.
Kaitlin rolled her eyes, and I giggled.
My intrigue wasn’t that far off from Nick’s, though. The story of the boy from Ward B was fascinating. And I wanted to know more about Emma and maybe e
ven my dad. The stories held within the walls of the wards were enormous, just dying to be heard.
Before long, I caught glimpse of the water tower that marked our destination. Braden knew the turns by heart, and I paid attention to the details of the surroundings this time. After passing the field with the ivy-covered black gate, the tires rumbled beneath us as we passed over old train tracks. They looked like they hadn’t been used in years, but still cut their way through the town holding on to their own stories.
“I didn’t notice tracks before,” I mumbled.
Braden’s head tipped. “There used to be a train station there. It’s where they brought in the new patients for the asylum.”
“Really?” I pictured the frightened faces of the new patients arriving.
“Yeah,” he replied. “An image popped up when I googled the hospital. Showed them taking the patients up the road in horse-drawn carts. All the locals stood on either side of the road to witness the arrival of the new ‘lunatics’. That was what they called them. It was like a circus.”
“That’s nuts.” I heard a train whistle blow in the far distance and pressed my back into my seat.
The humiliation for those patients started before they even reached the grounds of the asylum. I was sure the spectators were awful. They probably taunted them and threw things as they passed through.
I’d seen a similar image from long ago on my phone, in my own brief research. But the dated, black-and-white photograph I saw was a line of women walking from the dining hall back to their wards. Heads down. Hands folded. Long skirts. It twisted my stomach into knots, and I had closed the browser before seeing more. It felt odd now I hadn’t gone back to do more research, but I supposed I hadn’t had a moment’s time yet. Seemed like Braden had, though.
“Did you find out anything else?” I asked while typing ‘Blackwood State Hospital’ into my phone.
“Yeah.” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “A lot of stuff happened there that they didn’t want the public to know about. Not just experimental therapies and shit, but like psychotic shit.”
I kept my eye on him in the mirror. “Psychotic shit?”
He nodded and peeked at me again. “Yeah, like, deeply disturbing shit.”
My head throbbed with a new pain I hadn’t felt before. It could have been the screen-time while driving in a car, but I was more inclined to think it had to do with Braden’s reference to deeply disturbing events of the past at the asylum. I knew there were stories to be found on the internet, but I didn’t need those. Somehow, I already had them in my mind bouncing around, waiting to be deciphered.
“And we still need to find the cemetery,” Kaitlin interjected. “If you think about it, it’s what started this whole ordeal to begin with. We just wanted to find the damn cemetery.”
I chuckled at the simplicity of our original plan. But now, it had grown into something much larger. A story that unfolded before us, telling each chapter as we went through it. And if these recent events have been the foreshadowing, then we were in for one hell of a climax.
Braden parked the car beyond the old granite sign for the asylum. My eyelids fell, thinking back to the new patients being carted up this same road, past that dreadful sign. It was their last moments of freedom, and they didn’t even realize it. Until the gates closed with a clink behind them.
We climbed out of the car, trudging toward the entrance to the asylum. Shadows loomed over us from every direction, and a sick feeling of dread tightened my stomach.
“So what’s the plan?” Nick asked. “We gonna try to find a forgotten prisoner? Someone still trapped in the high-security ward? Long beard, shredded clothes?” He laughed.
Braden turned to me, waiting for a response. It seemed he wasn’t too sure what the plan was either and waited for my direction.
As we walked along the broken rubble of the old road, I realized there wasn’t a plan. We just needed to return. That was all I knew for sure. And now that we were there, we would just have to see what happened.
“It feels weird we were so driven to return here again,” I whispered to Kaitlin. “Like it pulled us back…taking our freedom with it.”
My words sent chills up my spine. There was an intensity about the asylum. A sense of overbearing control that held us captive.
“Don’t overthink it. You’ll freak me out.” Kaitlin wrapped her arms around herself.
As we reached the entryway to the grounds, Braden stopped and waited for me to reach him. His raised eyebrows asked for an answer to his previous question.
“Just tell me we’ll be hanging out later, no worries, with all of this behind us,” he said with a hopeful grin.
It didn’t sound half bad actually. I wouldn’t mind spending time with him later. No worries. All of this behind us.
“I need to get into the Excited Ward again.” The words fell from my mouth before I even knew what they were.
“Fuck no,” he yelled. “That place is dangerous. It’s condemned for a reason.” He shook his head at me. “Asbestos. Ever hear of that? Cancer?” He stared at me, waiting for a rational response.
“Well, I at least want to see what Tom can show us.” I watered down my response to a level Braden would accept.
He hoisted his backpack higher on his shoulder, continuing through the remains of the original gates.
I hid the smile that threatened to spread across my face. He acted like he didn’t want to be there or like he was the protective one, but it was clear he wanted to explore, too. His backpack had more than water bottles and protein bars. It probably had flashlights and tools, by the look of its bulk and weight. I smirked inwardly knowing he’d had the same thoughts about bringing pseudo-riot gear that I had back in Kaitlin’s room.
“Do you seriously want to go back into the Excited Ward?” Kaitlin inched up beside me.
My head tipped. “You don’t?”
It was a no-brainer to me. There was so much in there to be discovered. I was sure it held the answers we needed. The secrets it held screamed to make themselves known to us.
She shrugged, her gaze downcast. Her apprehension was normal, I supposed, but I didn’t need her to flake now. There was too much at stake. Now was our opportunity to figure all of this out. Otherwise, we’d probably be tormented and stalked by these visions and the ward, for the rest of our lives.
“Hey, I think that’s Tom’s truck,” Nick called from up ahead.
We moved into the grounds of the asylum, and the red brick buildings filled my sight. If not for all the boarded-up doors and windows, I would think we’d entered an ivy league college campus. The initial bucolic impression surprised me every time. Almost like a disguise for the treachery that truly lurked behind the shutters.
My eyes immediately shot to the clock tower that rose from the side of the chapel. The black hands that spun in my mind were missing, fallen off long ago, but vivid in my memory. Kaitlin, too, stared at the clock.
“He’s there,” Braden said, pointing to the loading dock of the dining hall.
He waved his arm to Tom, who was sitting on the concrete platform, waiting. Tom stood and walked toward us with a slow, relaxed stride. We moved along the road with the women’s wards along the side and closed the space between us.
Just as we approached Tom, close enough to see his friendly expression, we all fell silent. Tom slowed just in front of the Excited Ward, waiting for us to join him there. But something had shifted, changing our initial pace.
A heavy weight pressed down on me as we passed the first ward on the right—the one before the Excited Ward. Our nervous chatter shut down to full silence as we crossed in front of the ominous, dark building. Fighting the sensation of being rendered mute, I swallowed hard, trying to speak. It was like being caught in a nightmare where I couldn’t scream. My voice was gone.
My heart rate accelerated as pressure constricted my neck. I glanced toward the tree where we’d seen Emma hanging. And I reached for my throat and rubbed it. I wat
ched the others as we passed by the dark ward, and their shoulders slumped while their steps dragged. Kaitlin nearly fell forward to stagger past it.
As we moved closer to Tom, the cloudiness in my head cleared as I took a deep breath. The pressure in my neck released, and I coughed. The sound of my voice came out with a gasp.
“What the hell was that?” I blurted, rejoicing from the sound of my own voice. I looked behind me for any evidence of what could have had the power to steal our voices like that.
Tom stepped forward, nodding toward the building we’d just passed.
“That one,” he said. “It’s the Quiet Ward.”
Kaitlin bent over coughing, and color returned to her blanched face. She glanced up and from the corner of her eye, shot fear into my soul. I nodded to let her know I’d felt the powerful effect of the Quiet Ward as well. It had silenced us all.
“I’m intrigued you wanted to come back here.” Tom directed his comment to Kaitlin and me. “I’d have thought you’d have had enough, after what happened yesterday.”
Before I could respond, Braden retorted.
“They never have enough. Always pushing it to the next level.” Then he settled a firm stare on me.
My blood boiled at his cynical remark, and I fired back.
“We’re not easily frightened off,” I said to Tom, knowing full well the comment was a jab at Braden.
“Even when taking it to the next level,” Kaitlin murmured in my ear, and I elbowed her in the ribs.
“Okay, well, thought you might want to see a bit of the chapel or maybe the research laboratory where they practiced new treatments on the patients.” Tom pointed to the buildings across from the row of women’s wards.
My eyes trailed back to the Excited Ward and scanned its boarded windows, searching for any new weakness I’d missed previously.
I turned back to the group, catching Tom staring at me. He gave a subtle shake to his head and lowered his eyes, as if to suggest we wouldn’t be going back in there.
Now I was pissed we’d contacted him at all. If he weren’t here, we could find a way into that ward and…
The Shuttered Ward Page 15