The 13th

by John Everson

  “Did you at least see who she might have been talking to?”

  “Look sweetheart, keeping my eyes on the young sluts isn’t what I’m about when I’m here, okay? I don’t play that team, and usually, we’re working different fields anyway. I know she was here that night, and now that I see you, I seem to remember seeing her with you a couple times. But that’s all I know.”

  David backed off, thanking them, and drained the rest of his Guinness before putting it back on the bar.

  “Getcha another?” Joe asked, instantly materializing to take the empty.

  “Naw,” David said. “I got what I came for.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was nighttime at Castle House, but the asylum was not sleeping peacefully. On the first floor, Amelia was running barefoot down the thick-carpeted art-wing hallway. The moans had started an hour before, and she’d ignored them at first, but they’d redoubled in the past few minutes.

  She’d finally gone upstairs to check on Angela Kirtch, and realized with one look at the woman’s pain-etched face and arched back, that the time was NOW. She took the stairs two at a time, turned the corner and reached the door with the red X, panting. She threw open the door and called down the stairs. “It’s time,” she cried out into the darkness. “Barry, do you hear me? Our first baby is coming. Right now. We have to hurry.”

  In seconds, Rockford’s face emerged from the shadow, and he vaulted up the stairs. “I was just getting the crèche ready,” he said. “Do you have the instruments laid out?”

  Amelia nodded. “Everything is ready.”

  “Then let’s begin.”

  Together they hurried up the stairs to room one. When they reached the room, Amelia flipped the lights on as Barry went straight to the bedside. He put a wide palm on Angela’s distended belly, slowly moving it around and gently pressing, as he stroked her forehead. Then he lifted the thin cotton robe, and eased her legs outward in a V so that he could examine her. The bed was already slick with blood, and he shook his head.

  “She’s already crowning,” he said. “Let’s get her downstairs, now!”

  Amelia ran about the room, disconnecting heart monitors and propping open the door. Then she took the wheel locks off the bed with her foot and helped Barry shove the bed through the door and into the hallway. There was an elevator just around the corner. On the bed, Angela’s entire body tightened, her fingers clawing into the mattress. Even though she was still deeply tranquilized, her breathing quickened, and as the contraction peaked, she screamed. Her eyelids fluttered open, but Amelia could only see the whites of her eyeballs.

  Barry opened the elevator as Angela screamed again, and when the doors slid open, he stepped inside and pulled the bed after him. Then he pulled a key out of his pocket, slipped it into the lock on the elevator controls and turned it, before pressing the button marked simply, B.

  Angela moaned. “Oh God, it hurts,” she slurred.

  “And so it begins,” Barry answered.

  Brenda woke to the distant sound of screaming. She didn’t know that’s what it was at first. Because the first thing that crossed her dazed and reeling consciousness was that she seemed to be paralyzed. She swam out of oblivion slowly, amid an echo of people calling her name. Then she became aware of the dark around her, a palpable heavy darkness that swam across her vision like a relentless widow’s veil.

  “Who’s there?” she tried to ask in the black, but all that came out of her mouth was a thin hiss.

  Her body felt encased in amber, taut and immovable. She breathed, and when she forced her eyes to stare hard in the dark, she could see tiny motes of dust glowing and pinwheeling in the abyss.

  Her heart began to pound as she struggled to move her fingers, her arms, her legs, and nothing happened.

  “Oh my God,” she tried to say. But all her body did was whisper, “Gawwww.”

  In her mind, she slapped herself. “Cool it, calm down,” she said. “You had a bad night, probably drank more Guinness than you shoulda, and maybe someone spiked it, who knows? But you’ll sweat it off. Chill out.”

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on feeling her body. Everything seemed warm in a fuzzy, nerves-rubbed-raw kind of way. But she didn’t hurt. Just felt…sensitive. God, what had she done last night? And where was she? This was definitely not her bedroom. It didn’t smell right, for one thing. The air here seemed to taste…old…in her nostrils. And this bed did not have the dent her butt had worn in it over the last ten years. She’d gone home with someone…but who?

  She remembered the kid at the Shack…David, his name was. She vaguely remembered getting him water from the bar, ’cuz the Guinness had knocked him on his ass. She remembered thinking how sweetly pathetic he looked, passed out on the table, arms flat out in front of him, mouth half open. And then some lug had come up to hit on her, and she’d brushed him off. But after that…

  Then she heard something cry out in the darkness. Something far away…but not outside the building, she thought, whatever the building might be.

  It happened again, and she knew without a doubt that it was a muffled, but painful scream. Someone else was here. And someone was hurting her.

  Was she going to be next? Brenda tried to keep calm, but she couldn’t help but think of scenes from the movies Saw or Hostel. She felt sure now that she hadn’t gone home with someone for a one-nighter. She’d been too tied to David for that, and there’s no way he took anyone home that night. So where was she? Who had taken her home?

  And what was he going to do to her when he got here?

  From far off, she heard the scream again, only this time it didn’t seem to end, only ululating in descending and then reascending waves of pain.

  Oh shit, Brenda thought, and redoubled her attempts to move her arms and legs.

  Officer Christy Sorensen cut the engine of the smoking, rattling ‘78 Olds on the side of 190 just before the turnoff to Castle House. She stepped out of the car and pressed the door shut as quietly as possible, forcing the lock to catch by thumping it with her hip.

  Christy took a deep breath to steel herself for what was to come as she stared down the dark path that led to the asylum. Tree branches swayed in the gentle night breeze, and somewhere, an owl shrieked. Whether it was from frustration or victory at having swooped an unsuspecting mouse, she didn’t know. Right now she wondered if she was about to become predator or prey.

  She hadn’t envisioned police work as walking down a dark road toward an asylum after dark, that was for sure. Her heart beat double time as she started down the path, trying to walk softly, but cringing when twigs snapped beneath the soft rubber soles of her gym shoes. She’d worn her old running shoes, along with dark jeans and a black T-shirt. At least while she was outside, she hoped it would help her blend into the scenery if anyone inside was looking out a window as she approached.

  When she neared the building, she slipped to the side of the road, trying to walk as close to the tree line as possible to stay out of sight.

  There were only a few lights on in the old building as Christy crept up on it. One of the rooms overlooking the ridge was lit and she saw what she thought was the shadow of a figure crossing back and forth inside. A couple windows on the main floor burned bright, though the shades were drawn. She could see the faint glow of light emanating from the window wells around the foundation as well, so someone was in the basement.

  Christy crouched at the edge of the tree line and considered the building. She could see the old ivy-covered front brick and wide-stepped entryway to her left. She was not going to just walk in the front door, that was for sure. She needed another entrance.

  Still crouching, she ran down the length of the side of the building and came around to the back of the old hotel. Long-abandoned gardens—now just circles of cracked red brick and flagstone edging filled with towering bushes and weeds—dotted the clearing there that sloped down to disappear into a forested gully. Nearer the building were some kind of small garage or garde
ner’s shed, and a wide paving-stone patio. A large two-door back entryway, covered by a green awning, led out to the patio. It was a possible entry point, but Christy worried that it still might open into someplace too public inside the asylum.

  Her eyes continued to peer down at the far end of the long mansion, where a gravel path wound around the building to end in a turnaround near another nondescript white door inset in the building. This one had no awning or adornments of any kind. Some kind of rear delivery entrance, she surmised, and darted across the patio and gravel turnaround. When she reached the door, she dropped to all fours with her back to the asylum and looked around as she caught her breath. The night remained still. In the distance, the faint purple skim of the sunset still colored the horizon, but just barely. The stars had clearly inherited the sky, and the heavens were pinpricked with a million tiny lights. The moon hadn’t yet risen, but the stars gave enough illumination that Christy could see the tops of the trees all the way across the gulley and up the other side where the hills climbed back to 190.

  As she reached up to grasp the doorknob, Christy froze.

  From somewhere inside the building, someone screamed. She didn’t move a muscle, though her chest felt gripped in a vise. The noise came again, a long, pitiful cry. And again. Then it grew shrill, an extended “eeeeyiiiiahhhhoooooh” of someone in horrible pain. Christy stayed hunched by the back door for several minutes as the series of short screams ignited into one long crescendo of misery.

  All of her police instincts told her to force her way inside and rescue the poor soul from whatever torment she was being subjected to. But she squelched them. This was a place of medicine, and theoretically, the doctor inside was helping the crying woman. For Christy to barge in without cause would not only blow her cover for the night, it would put the doctor firmly on guard against the Castle Point police, and likely earn her a suspension if the doctor decided to pursue a wrongful trespass suit.

  Without warning, the crying muffled, and then disappeared entirely. Christy counted to a hundred, holding her back to the door, and then pulled out her lock-pick case from a back pocket. Time to slip inside and see what the hell was going on in there.

  She tried the easy way first, slipping a skeleton key into the old knob. Gently pushing and jittering the key in the door, she pushed it to the right and tried turning the knob slightly at the same time. It stuck the first time, refusing to budge. But then she pulled the key back a hair, twisted it again, and something clicked.

  Easy as pie, she thought, and smiled to herself. Pressing her shoulder and hip to the door, she pushed it open, but as slowly as possible, in case someone was nearby, or the door hinges squeaked.

  There was a slight squeal as the door arced inward, and Christy gritted her teeth. Nothing she could do about it. She quickly pushed open the door, slipped inside, and then gently pushed it shut.

  She was in a small black-and-white-tiled foyer. Two hallways branched off of it, one going straight ahead, the other to the right. Coin toss, she thought, and decided to slip to the right first. She guessed the one leading straight ahead might move directly to the center of the building, where people might be…and she wanted to move around them rather than fall straight into their laps.

  The hall was dark, but Christy’s eyes were adjusted to low light from walking outside, and she managed to see enough shadow to avoid tripping over a chair and a table set in a corner where the corridor took an abrupt left. There was light at the end of that tunnel, and she stepped carefully the closer she got to its end.

  The end was a wide-open lobby-style room, a handful of couches and coffee tables scattered about. The room wasn’t lit, but there was a bright source of light from farther down the way to the left, where Christy imagined the main offices of the asylum were housed. She opted to avoid that area, and crossed the lobby, coming to another branching corridor. But this one didn’t just wind on. It passed a narrow stairway on the right, and Christy hurriedly crossed the heavy carpet and walked up the first few steps. The stairway turned in an L before she reached the top, and found herself standing at the end of a long, empty hall.

  Jesus, she thought. Doesn’t this place ever fuckin’ end? One hall after another!

  But this one had a series of doors—hotel suites—breaking the pin-striped wallpaper of its inside wall. She began to walk down the corridor, watching the numbers go up—2015, 2017, 2019, 2021.

  And then suddenly the old number plates stopped, and a new one appeared, this one simpler…and out of sequence. In a simple white-on-black sign, the room was designated as “13.”

  Christy tried the knob, and it turned easily. She looked around the hallway, and, assured that nobody was coming, she pushed the door open and peered inside. It was dark, but starlight filtered into the room through the thin gauze curtains, enough that Christy could see that the room was empty. One perfectly made-up bed pressed against the left wall, while an old bureau took up the opposite. The room felt pensive in the blue twilight…as if it was only waiting to be filled. Waiting impatiently.

  She eased the door shut, and tried the next room, also newly labeled, “12.”

  There’s something about the aura a human being exudes. Maybe it’s just the rhythm of breath, or the animal faculties in our back brain that still instantly pick up the scent of prey. But this time when the door opened, Christy knew before she could even make out anything inside the room that it was occupied.

  She instinctively began to ease the door closed, but then she remembered why she was here in the first place. Slipping inside, she eased the door shut behind her and stared at the figure on the bed, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the shadows. Female, light hair, young—in her twenties or thirties. She couldn’t tell much else, as the woman lay sleeping beneath the covers.

  Quietly she tiptoed up to the edge of the bed to get a better look at the woman’s face. With visions of the sleeping woman coming to and screaming an alarm to the whole floor, Christy’s heart was thudding like a jackhammer, but she forced herself to go ahead and lean closer. These patients were supposed to be pretty heavily sedated, from what the doctor had said the other day, and from the slow, deep breathing of this one, she supposed that was true. Plus there was a heavy white strap of gauze across the back of the woman’s head…Apparently this woman wasn’t just here for psych reasons; she’d had cranial trauma.

  She snapped her fingers in front of the woman’s face, click, click, but there was no response.

  Stepping away from the bed, Christy found a string hanging from the ceiling in the closet, and pulled it, flooding the room with yellow light. She closed the closet most of the way, and then pulled out a folded wad of papers from her back pocket—the fax of missing persons she’d gotten from Oak Falls PD.

  It only took a minute for a positive ID.

  Carrie Sanddanz, twenty-nine, Oak Falls.

  Reported missing just three days ago.

  Christy’s stomach contracted into a snowball. Why would this woman have ended up in an asylum supposedly for abused and pushed-over-the-edge women when she was just reported missing this week?

  She looked back and forth between the picture and the woman’s sleeping face, confirming again and again that this had to be one and the same person. Christy put her hand on the woman’s forehead, and the woman sighed in her sleep.

  Christy pulled back, and then stood over the bed, in conflict over what exactly to do now. She’d found one of the missing persons at a mental institution. An institution she had no warrant to be inside. Absently, her fingers wound together and Christy did what she always did when she was nervous and lost in thought.

  She cracked her knuckles.

  Oh crap, she thought as the sound snapped through empty air like a cap gun. The figure on the bed stirred and Christy backed away fast. She was almost out of the room before she remembered the closet light. “Oh come on,” she moaned silently, and then hurriedly retraced her steps to pull the string to douse the light, before slipping back out
of the room and into the well-lit hallway.

  Christy didn’t notice the hand that rose in the darkness from the bed, or see Carrie’s eyes flicker open, to stare in blurry incomprehension at the shadows of the strange room. She didn’t notice Carrie slowly roll to her side, clutching at her belly, and then roll to the edge of the bed, tentatively feeling the open black space with her leg for the floor. She didn’t hear the closet light click back on.

  After the door shut behind her, Christy’s eyes blinked and teared at the sudden change in light from dark room to electric-lit hall, and nervously she looked back and forth as she wiped her cheeks and began to creep again along the hallway toward the next number, which she guessed—and was right—would be eleven.

  Again the knob turned without issue, but as soon as she poked her head in, she realized that she didn’t dare enter. The dark-haired woman on the bed tossed and turned, kicking sheets away and mumbling something in her sleep. Christy pulled the door shut and proceeded to room ten.

  This room was again quiet as a crypt, but another young woman lay prone on the bed, hands tucked to her obviously pregnant belly. Using the closet light, again she was able to positively ID the woman as one of the missing persons on the Oak Falls list. Trisha Kacek, thirty-two, reported missing two weeks ago after a night at a bar.

  Room nine held another missing Oak Falls woman, Alina Prus. And room eight hosted a former cleaning woman from Oak Falls—Becky Mills.

  Christy’s skin was crawling by the time she pulled the door closed on room eight. If she kept going down the rest of the hallway, she had no doubt that she’d find the rest of the names on the list that Oak Falls had sent her; some of them missing for more than six months.

  But why were they all here? They certainly all couldn’t be crazy, unless something was going on with the water in Oak Falls. And why hadn’t the asylum been in contact with the families?