The Seventh Ward (The Haunted Book 2) Page 6

  “Uh, guys, I think you are going to want to see this…”

  Chapter 10

  FOURTEEN YEARS AGO

  “You come near me, and I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him just like I killed Mrs. Dupuis,” Andrew spat. He pressed the knife even harder against Dr. Mansfield’s throat, drawing a thin line of blood.

  There were three security guards and two orderlies blocking his path out of the room. All of the nurses that had initially rushed to Mrs. Dupuis’s aid had since receded to their station, or were cordoned in the lounge, as was protocol.

  All of them were safe, except for one. Dr. Mansfield caught a flash of the pale blue nurse scrubs between the three large security guards.

  “Andrew,” Vern began sternly. The man had obviously disregarded Dr. Mansfield’s instructions to head home, and he was instantly grateful. After all, Vern was a big man. Very big and very strong. “Think about what you are doing—where are you going to go? There are police on the way—they’ll be here any minute. There is no way that you will get out of here.”

  Andrew’s eyes darted around nervously, and Dr. Mansfield felt the knife scrape up and down on his flesh as his hand jiggled.

  “You hear that, George? They don’t think that I’ll be able to get out of here. What do you think?”

  Dr. Mansfield swallowed hard. He had dealt with psychopaths before, of course, but he had never been in a situation like this…one that held such extreme consequences for himself. His mind whirred, trying to figure out the best approach—how he could save not only his own life, but save Andrew’s as well. After all, despite what he had done to Mrs. Dupuis, he deserved help.

  He was sick, and all sick people deserved a chance at getting healthy again.

  “Eh, George? What d’you think?” Andrew’s hands were covered in blood, and when he spoke, his wrists stuck uncomfortably to Dr. Mansfield’s neck.

  “I think—I think that you can end this, Dr. Shaw. End it now.”

  “Oh? End it?” He pushed the blade just a little harder, “End it like this?”

  “No!” one of the orderlies shouted.

  “Please,” Dr. Mansfield pleaded, immediately changing tactics. His hope was to try and bring the Andrew he had met to the fore again, but with the blade cutting into his skin, he couldn’t concentrate. “You don’t have to do this. I can help you, I know—”

  Andrew laughed.

  “You can help me? See, that’s where you have it all wrong, George. You can’t help me—I can help you. I know how to fix these people. You, on the other hand—”

  Another voice entered the fray, one that belonged to the woman in the blue nurse scrubs.

  “He’s right,” Justine said just loudly enough to be heard over the alarm that continued to wail. “He can actually help these people. Don’t you want that? Doesn’t everyone here want that?”

  Dr. Mansfield’s eyes narrowed and he felt the pressure on his neck ease just a little.

  “Justine? What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  The woman raised her eyes to stare at him.

  “I’m helping the good doctor,” she replied instantly. “Didn’t you read the notebook?”

  Dr. Mansfield was incredulous, recalling the single line repeated over and over.

  …there’s someone inside me…

  “It was nonsense, Justine. The scribblings of a very, very sick man. You can’t—”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “Come with me, Andrew. I know a way out…a way out back and into the hills, somewhere you can slip out.”

  The knife was back against his Adam’s apple again.

  Justine’s eyes went wide with excitement.

  “Come, come,” she said, shoving one of the security guards to one side and waving both Andrew and Dr. Mansfield forward.

  “You try anything,” Andrew whispered through clenched teeth, “and I won’t hesitate to cut him open.”

  With the blade digging into his skin, Dr. Mansfield had no choice but to step forward when Andrew nudged him in the back.

  At first, everyone remained rooted, unsure of how to react. But then Andrew shouted, and they instinctively made a path.

  “You hear that? Get the fuck out of the way!”

  Vern made eye contact with Dr. Mansfield, waiting for an indication, any suggestion—a nod, a wink, a fucking swallow—to pounce. But George Mansfield was a psychiatrist, not a hero.

  He lowered his gaze and shuffled forward again.

  It was the last time he saw Vern, or any of them, ever again.

  ***

  “Where are you taking me?” Dr. Mansfield gasped.

  The blade was still pressed tightly to his throat, and with every uneven step they took up the side of the hill, it jostled, scraping like the straight razor of a barber suffering from Parkinson’s.

  “You’ll see,” Andrew said, shoving the doctor forward once more. “You’ll see.”

  Before leaving the hospital, Justine had secured some length of cable and had wrapped it around Dr. Mansfield’s hands in front of him. The terrain was difficult enough—steep, and overgrown—but without his hands to balance himself, he found himself stumbling every four or five steps.

  His knees were raw and chaffed beneath his pants and lab coat.

  The police have to be coming soon, don’t they?

  He perked his ears, trying to pick up the sound of sirens, but the only thing he could hear was the sound of the alarm coming from the smashed window somewhere behind and below them.

  “Move,” Andrew ordered, and Dr. Mansfield picked up the pace to avoid being shoved again.

  Security? Will security come after us?

  Justine, whose face was beet red, and who was desperately trying to catch her breath, finally appeared in his periphery.

  “Justine,” Dr. Mansfield begged. “Don’t do this. You’re a good person, I know that. Whatever you think—whatever you think that Andrew is going to do for—”

  Something hard suddenly struck the base of his skull, and stars flashed in front of his eyes. He cried out and fell forward, smashing his chin and elbows on the terrain in front of him.

  Groaning at the dull throb that seemed to encase his entire head, he struggled to roll over, but couldn’t manage with his hands bound. Instead, he craned his neck around, trying to figure out what had happened.

  Andrew Shaw was hovering over him, a leer on his face and a blazing look in his eyes. In that moment, Dr. Mansfield knew that this man would do anything to prove his insane theory.

  He just hadn’t yet figured out what role he had to play in all of this.

  …there is someone inside me…

  As darkness started to overtake him, Dr. Mansfield’s gaze slowly drifted down to Andrew’s left hand. In it, he held a fist-sized stone streaked with blood.

  His blood.

  “I told you already,” Andrew hissed. “You are to address me as Dr. Shaw. After all, I am about to make the greatest psychiatric discovery in the last fifty years.”

  Dr. Mansfield’s eyelids dropped, and then they closed completely.

  “And you, George Mansfield, are going to help me.”

  Chapter 11

  Robert swallowed hard. His stomach and constitution had hardened after seeing what he had in the Harlop Estate, including James Harlop’s gaping neck wound.

  But this was different. The images on Shelly’s phone were not of ghosts, apparitions, or quiddity, but of real body parts. Bloody, ragged stumps.

  “Fuck, put it away,” he grumbled, bringing his eyes back to the road.

  “Sick,” Cal added.

  “What? Now you guys are becoming pussies? When I was the one that said this whole fucking thing was a bad idea, you guys were quick to tell me otherwise. But now when there’s a little blood involved, you guys are suddenly squeamish?”

  Shelly paused, but neither Robert nor Cal offered a response.

  “Look, you guys need to smarten up. I may not have been in this game for lon
g, but I’ve been around it for more than both of you combined. And what the fuck? How am I the one that has to be rational? Jesus, you guys didn’t look up the Harlop Estate on the ‘net, and now a man offers you some cash—”

  “—a hundred grand—”

  “—fuck, whatever, some guy offers you a shitload of money, and you think all you’re going to have to do is wave your pretty asses in the air, toss a gas mask or book at a ghost, and then poof, we’re rich? You think this is the newest installment of Paranormal Activity? Paranormal Activity: Indecent Proposal Edition?”

  Robert glanced back at Cal in his silk robe and felt a smile creep onto his face despite Shelly’s tone.

  “It’s not a joke, Robert. We got lucky last time…really lucky. In fact, I can barely believe that you made it out of the basement at all. This…this is different. This time, we are in a foreign place—a fucking hospital, of all things—and we have no idea what’s waiting for us inside. Seriously, you think that these limbs are bad? I have read—I’ve read—”

  “Shelly, we aren’t taking this as a joke,” Cal interrupted her, his tone soft, soothing.

  Shelly rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t patronize me. This is going to be fucked up, Cal. More fucked up than the Harlop Estate. I just hope that you are ready for what is to come.”

  Cal shrugged.

  “I have no idea what to expect, but if there’s one thing…”

  When he paused, Robert’s gaze flicked up to the rear-view mirror. Cal had that same look on his face, the one that he had first seen when his friend had spoken about the train accident, when he had watched his friend die. Back then, Robert had thought that there was more to the story, but at the time he hadn’t pressed. A pang of guilt unexpectedly struck him.

  In the three months since that they had lived together, it hadn’t even crossed his mind to ask Cal about the incident. He had just been too wrapped up in his own shit. In the Marrow.

  Fuck.

  Shelly spoke next, but this time her tone, like Cal’s, had become subdued. There was also something foreboding in the air, a feeling that had first arisen when Shelly had read those fateful words.

  Dismembered.

  Robert shuddered.

  “I just want you guys to take this seriously. This is…this is no joke. We can enter this hospital, this Seventh Ward, and never come back out again. And the place that the quiddity might take us…well, there ain’t no leprechauns and rainbows there, let me tell you.”

  Cal cleared his throat.

  “We said we’ll take a look. If it’s too fucked up, we walk away. That’s all there is to it.”

  All three of them nodded and then the car fell into silence.

  “Guys?” Robert said after several minutes.

  “Yeah?”

  Robert pulled the car to the faded lift-arm gate and stopped.

  “We’re here. Behold, Pinedale Hospital in all its glory.”

  No one in the car laughed.

  They didn’t even smile.

  ***

  The first obstacle was the gate, which was so worn and weak that it basically crumbled when Cal tried to lift it. The second proved more formidable.

  “You sure your boyfriend didn’t slip a key into the envelope?” Shelly asked, her trademark humor slowly creeping back.

  “No, just the letter,” Robert replied with a shrug.

  Shelly reached up and yanked ineffectively on the thick metal padlock that kept the front door firmly shut. There was another lock closer to the handle, a smaller but more rugged-looking hunk of metal, and this was also locked.

  Shelly shrugged.

  “That’s it, then. Let’s go home, then, boys,” she said, only half serious.

  Cal stepped forward, and Robert smirked at his sudden chivalrous behavior. The man’s feelings for Shelly ran deeper than he had first thought.

  “Lemme try.”

  Shelly stepped aside.

  “Be my guest, Sir Gallahad.”

  Robert watched on in amusement, ready to step forward and stop the man from hurting himself. That is, until Cal reached into the back of his silk bathrobe and pulled out a full-sized crowbar.

  Robert’s eyes bulged.

  “What the shit? Where the hell did you get that from?”

  Cal chuckled as he started to wedge the crowbar between the lock and the metal door.

  “You think I’m only good at digging graves, Robbo?” he grunted as he applied force to the lever. It didn’t budge. “I’m also—” He wheezed and applied more pressure. “—excellent at—”

  Robert could see a vein in his forehead start to throb. The lock, however, was ambivalent to his exertion. With a violent shove, the crowbar slipped and Cal jammed his hand against the door.

  “Shit…” he said, sucking the small cut on his finger and putting the crowbar back to wherever he’d gotten it from beneath his robe. “Won’t budge.”

  Shelly laughed.

  “What? You got something in that Hello Kitty backpack that you think you can do better with?”

  “I have a blowtorch in here, but I don’t think it’ll do much to that lock.”

  Robert gawked.

  “You what? You have a blowtorch? Jesus Christ, am I the only one that didn’t come armed with a machine shop?”

  “Stop bickering and let’s find another way in,” Shelly said.

  Robert still felt a little naked, given that the only thing that he had brought with him was the letter that Sean had handed him. And of course the small, square photograph of Amy.

  He brought that with him everywhere, either jammed into his wallet or just in his pocket.

  “Fine, but you’re leading the way with your crowbar, Cal.”

  Set with the back side butting up against a large hill, Pinedale Hospital reminded Robert a lot of the Harlop Estate. It didn’t have the same pedigree, of course, as it was less than sixty years old, but it looked worse for wear. There was graffiti everywhere; graffiti covering older graffiti, making all of the tagging nonsensical smears. It was like Jackson Pollack had been commissioned to paint over the Mona Lisa.

  Pinedale wasn’t a particularly large hospital, which wasn’t much of a surprise given that the town of Corgin only boasted a population of seventy-five thousand. Robert’s eyes instinctively flicked upward, and he counted the windows that were covered with wire mesh.

  Seven floors… the top floor must be the Seventh Ward.

  Cal suggested that they stay out of sight given that it was still early afternoon and it would not go over well if they were confronted armed with a blowtorch and a crowbar.

  No, Officer, we weren’t trying to break into the abandoned hospital. We were just starting a machine shop in the parking lot.

  Robert would take low odds on talking their way out of that one.

  The trio snaked their way around the side of the building, then hurried through an abandoned parking lot.

  “I think we have to go the other way,” Cal offered when they reached the corner of the building, which pressed up against the side of the hill. Up close, the hill was far steeper than Robert had first thought. Although he could see the top, he had no idea what was beyond the thicket of trees that sprouted from the apex.

  Robert pushed by Cal to get a better look around the corner of the hospital. While there were trees on the top of the hill, the vegetation on the actual slope, and behind the hospital, was fairly sparse. It also seemed to open up a bit just a few feet in—there was at least a foot of separation between the outer wall and the hill.

  “Pass me your cell, Cal,” he demanded. Even though it as still sunny out, the hill blocked most of the natural light.

  Cal handed over his phone, the flashlight already on. Robert took it, and then leaned around the corner of the building and shone the light back there. For a second, the only thing he saw was more overgrown weeds.

  “You see anything?” Cal asked, his tone suddenly more mellow than it had been when he’d been tackling the front doo
r.

  “Naw, I think we can fit through, but—” Robert waved the cellphone back and forth. “—wait a sec. I think there’s a window back here.” He switched off the phone and eyed Cal. “Looks like we can probably fit through.”

  Cal snorted.

  “Fuck off, I’ll fit.”

  Robert went first, then Shelly. True to his word, with a little awkward yoga and rhythmic sucking in and out of his gut, Cal managed to squeeze between the wall and the side of the hill. The effort reddened his face, and sweat had formed on his brow; Robert guessed that this was the second most exercise that the man had gotten in years.

  The first being digging the graves for the Harlop family, of course.

  As Robert had suspected, it opened up a few feet behind the hospital, and after a few seconds they could comfortably walk single file. Soon Robert found his gaze drifting up the embankment to their left.

  Is this how the crazed patient escaped the hospital with the doctor?

  From this angle, the trees at the top looked massive, giant spires heading into the stratosphere. Still, he couldn’t imagine how the police could never find them.

  “Robbo, pay attention,” Cal snapped.

  The light from the cell had drifted with his gaze, and he immediately focused the weak beam on the grass in front of him.

  As they approached the window, the light started scattering off something in the overgrown grass: shards of glass.

  “Looks like we weren’t the first ones to come back here,” Robert grumbled, shining the light at the smashed window for them all to see. The opening measured at least two feet by two feet—more than large enough for them all to climb through.

  “We can fit,” Robert confirmed as he inspected the sill. There was something dark on the edge, something that instinctively reminded him of blood. He considered running his fingers across the smudge, but decided against it.

  He kept this to himself, raising the light above it.

  “Hey, Cal?” he asked, his eyes now trained on the dark interior of the hospital. The feeble light did a poor job of illuminating the dust-filled air, casting the old-fashioned black and white linoleum tiles in an eerie blue glow.