by Amy Cross
She doesn't look at me, but instead she opens her mouth and lets out a low, guttural gasp.
"Please," I say, pulling my phone from my pocket, "just try not to hurt yourself". I pull up Lizzie's number and try calling her, but the call doesn't connect and when I check the screen, I see that I've once again got no signal. "Great," I mutter as I put the phone away. It's almost as if something is deliberately blocking me every time I need to call for help. Glancing along the corridor, I suddenly see where Ruth Brown is headed: about ten meters away, at the next junctions, there's the boarded up door to the abandoned ward.
"You don't want to go in there," I say, looking back down at Ruth, but it's quite clear from the look on her face that she's heading deliberately toward the door. "Please," I continue, moving along the floor a little in order to keep pace with her. "You really, really don't want to go in there. There's nothing for you through that door, it's just a really cold, really horrible place". Realizing that she's either not hearing me or not paying attention, I hurry in front of her and sit right in the middle of the corridor, blocking her way. "I'm taking you back to bed," I say firmly, staring straight into her eyes. "Do you understand me? I'm taking you back to your room so you can go to bed".
Ignoring me, she slowly starts trying to crawl around me, but I immediately block her again.
"It's not going to work," I say firmly. "There's nothing for you up there, so just let me help you. Please!"
She tries to get around me again, but I keep myself in her path. After a moment, she pauses, as if she's actually starting to realize that she's going the wrong way.
"Back to bed," I say, trying not to sound too harsh or mean. "Seriously, it's -"
With no warning, she suddenly lurches straight toward me, letting out a deep growl as she reaches up and grabs my face, digging her fingernails into my skin. I gasp as I feel her cutting my skin, and I immediately pull back. Putting my hand up to feel the wounds, I find that there are small trickles of blood coming from each of the cuts. By the time I'm come to terms with the fact that she just scratched my face, I realize she's already started to make her way around me. It's as if her determination to get to the abandoned ward is stronger than any other impulse.
"You have to come with me," I say, my voice trembling with shock.
She ignores me once again, instead crawling on her hands and knees, her thin hospital gown barely covering her thin body.
"You can't go in there," I say, checking my phone again and seeing that there's still no signal. I reach out to hold Ruth Brown's arm, but she suddenly turns and lunges at me, digging her teeth into the flesh of my wrist. Stunned, I try to pull back, but she's got a strong grip with her jaws and she won't let go, not even when I feel her teeth start to puncture the skin. Blood dribbles down onto the floor, but I'm scared to pull away too hard, in case I cause more damage. "Get off!" I shout, forcing myself to hold back from hitting her. I put my other hand on her face and try to gently ease her away, and finally she pulls back.
"Fuck!" I gasp as I check the damage to my wrist. She hasn't done any major damage, but I can see the outlines of her teeth in my skin, and she's broken the flesh in several places. The pain isn't too great, though. When I look back over at her, I see that she's finally reached the door to the abandoned ward, and now she's reaching up in an attempt to get hold of the padlock. As hard as she tries, however, she seems to be completely unable to get her shaking hand up high enough.
"You won't get in," I say, making sure to keep my distance from her. "The only way you could ever get through that door is if someone helped you, and there's no way I'm going to do that, so you might as well just give up".
She continues to reach up for the padlock. Even if she could manage to get to it, however, there's no way she's be able to force it open. All her intensity, and all her passion, has led her to this point, but there's simply no way she could ever break a door down. I take a deep breath, keen to avoid being bitten again but also keenly aware that I have to do something. I look at the floor and see that she's left a trail of sweat and flaky skin as she made her way here.
"You're going to die," I say eventually. "I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can, you might as well know the truth. Do you really want to spend your final moments here, like some kind of addict? Or do you want me to take you back to your room so you can die in peace?"
She gasps as her wrinkled, trembling hand continues to reach up toward the padlock.
"What's in there that you want so much, anyway?" I ask, even though I've got a horrible feeling that I already know the answer. I get to my feet and walk over to her, making sure to stay a safe distance away. "Have you been in there before? Did you meet anyone while you were inside?" I look at the little window in the middle of the door; I can see the brightly-lit abandoned ward on the other side, looking cold and empty. "Did you meet her?" I ask, looking back down at Ruth Brown. "Jennifer, or whatever her name is".
I wait for some kind of response, but there's nothing. It's as if every scrap of energy left in her body is being directed toward one goal, and one goal only: she wants to get through this door and onto the abandoned ward.
"You have to come back with me now," I say, staring down at her tired, weathered face. "I'm not angry at you for biting me and scratching me, but there's no way I'm ever going to open this door for you. There's nothing through there but..." I pause for a moment, remembering the night I walked through this door. "There's nothing that can help you," I continue. "There's nothing through there that can make things any better".
"Are you sure about that?" whispers a voice nearby, and I turn to see Jennifer standing on the other side of the door, staring at me through the window.
"What do you want with her?" I ask.
"Me?" she replies, smiling. "Who says I want anything with her?"
"You're luring her toward you," I point out.
She shakes her head. "If I wanted her in here, don't you think I'd have opened the door by now?" She pauses for a moment. "Whatever's driving her, it's nothing to do with me. I could open the padlock and let her in, though. I mean, if nothing else, it'd be interesting to see what she did, wouldn't it? Anyway, what do you care? The old woman bit you and scratched your face. Are you really so worried about her? If she wants to come in here, why not just let her?"
"Because I -" Suddenly the padlock opens itself.
Gasping, Ruth Brown makes one final effort to reach the handle, but I push her hand away and she falls flat on her back. I immediately kneel next to her, worried that I've hurt her, but she quickly starts trying to get up again. It's as if she's some kind of junkie, and the abandoned ward is her fix; she seems filled with an overwhelming urge to get through the door, and she won't let anything stand in her way.
"It's not happening," I say, grabbing the padlock and forcing it shut again.
"What are you scared of?" Jennifer asks.
"I'm not scared of anything," I reply, "I just don't want to go chasing her any more. I'm taking her back to her room".
"Spoilsport," Jennifer says. "Aren't you curious? I know I am".
"That's not how it's going to work tonight," I say, stepping around Ruth Brown and finally putting my hands under her arms. Making sure I'm being her, and that she can't reach me with her teeth, I slowly start dragging her along the floor. It feels totally wrong to be doing this, and completely disrespectful, but I figure it's better than just letting her remain out here in the cold. "I'm taking you back to your room," I say, "whether you like it or not".
"Come and see me again soon!" Jennifer calls out.
Although Ruth Brown struggles a little as I pull her back along the corridor, she doesn't put up as much of a fight as I'd expected. It's almost as if the exertion required to get all the way to the abandoned ward has drained her, and she seems to be slipping back into her non-responsive state. Struggling a little, even though she's hardly a heavy woman, I eventually manage to get her back to her room. Realizing that she seems docile again, I deci
de to take the risk of getting closer to her, and I'm finally able to haul her up and back onto her bed. After a few minutes, I've got her tucked in again, and it's almost as if she never left the room in the first place.
"Where the hell was she?" says Lizzie, hurrying into the room. "Why didn't you call to let me know you'd found her?"
"She was up near the red ward's rec room," I say, deciding to skirt around the events concerning the abandoned ward. Reaching into my pocket, I find that my phone is looking fine, with no signal problems. "I think I need to get a new phone," I add. "This one isn't quite working normally".
Lizzie busies herself with Ruth Brown, checking her over. "She seems okay," she says after a moment, "but I don't understand how she could have got out of bed. She's been half-dead for so long, there's just no way she could..." She sighs. "You know what? It's not a problem". There's an awkward pause. "Juliet, I'm going to say something that could get us both in a lot of trouble, but I hope you'll be smart enough to realize it's by far the best approach. If we write about this incident in the logbook, we'll get asked a heap of questions. We might even end up on suspension. It's going to cause nothing but trouble, and it won't benefit anyone".
"So you want to keep it quiet," I say, realizing where this conversation is headed.
"It's for the best," she says. "No-one comes out of things well if we open up a can of worms. I'm confident that whatever happened tonight was out of our control, so there's no reason for us to undergo any kind of review. I believe with total confidence that you did nothing wrong, but let's face it... If Charles or one of the others starts an investigation, it's your ass that'll be on the line. Mine too, a bit, but mainly you. So for both our sakes, I'm proposing that we just forget that any of this happened". She stares at me for a moment. "Are you with me on this, Juliet?"
"Yeah," I say, figuring that the last thing I need to do right now is draw attention to what's been happening around here. "Sounds good to me".
"Okay," she replies. "I'm going to go check on the other residents, and you need to just sit here and resume your watch. If she moves again, if she even flinches a finger, you get out of here and you lock the door behind you, okay?" She fishes a key from her pocket and hands it to me. "You're not supposed to have this, but just keep hold of it for the rest of the shift. If she does anything, you lock her in and come find me. I'd tell you to use your phone, but I think we've established that something tends to go wrong every time that idea comes up". She sighs. "When the sun comes up, if she's still alive, she's someone else's problem".
"Sure," I say.
Once Lizzie has left the room, I walk over to the bed and stare down at Ruth Brown. She's back to her former condition, with her eyes closed and her breathing becoming slow and heavy. Whatever sparked that brief flurry of activity, it seems to have passed.
"I'm sorry I dragged you," I say, keeping my voice down. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I couldn't leave you there. I guess sometimes you have to help people even when they want you to leave them alone". I look at the bite marks on my hand; at least Lizzie didn't notice that I'd been hurt while I was trying to get Ruth Brown back to her room. "Trust me," I continue, "you really didn't want to go into that ward. There's nothing there. Nothing good, anyway".
I turn and walk over to my chair, but after a moment I hear the sound of movement and I glance back at the bed. To my shock, she's opened her eyes again, and she lets out another deep growl. I make my way over to the door, but something tells me that whatever's happening this time, it's different somehow. I walk back over to the bed and realize that she's not getting up; she's dying. From the depths of her throat, she emits a grinding death rattle that sends a chill down my spine. She blinks a couple of times, and then she just stares up at the ceiling. I keep my eyes focused on her face, and after a couple of minutes I realize that she's dead. I wait a little longer, but eventually there's no doubt at all.
"Bye," I say quietly, immediately realizing that my choice of words sounds kind of flippant. "Rest in peace," I add, though even that seems a little wrong somehow.
Turning and walking out of the room, I walk slowly to the reception area, where I head straight to the office. I grab the logbook from the top of the filing cabinet and open it to today's date. Apart from the change of the last shift, there's nothing mentioned, not even in the column that's reserved for any unusual notes or comments. I check my watch and see that it's 4:55am, so I carefully enter Ruth Brown's time of death in the logbook. Once I'm done, I put everything away, take a deep breath, and make my way slowly to the blue ward, figuring I need to find Lizzie and tell her what happened. I guess that now, with the death watch over, it's time to get on with my normal duties.
Chapter Eight
Eleven years ago
Once my father has put me to bed, I stay awake in the darkness and stare at the window. It's barely 9pm and I know my father will still be awake for a while; even now, I can hear him shuffling about downstairs, doing whatever he does when he's alone at night. Before my mother died and I came to live with him, he used to go out a lot, drinking in bars and going to parties; now he has to spend his nights in the house, at least until he's managed to find a babysitter. He spends a lot of time on his computer, mostly either playing chess or going on dating websites, and I'm pretty sure he has a couple of glasses of wine. Everything about the situation seems temporary; even my bedroom is really just a store-room, with shelves running along all the walls, containing hundreds of old vinyl jazz records. It's better than nothing, but I can't help wondering how long it'll be before he decides things have to change.
After staying awake for a few hours, I hear my father coming upstairs and going into his room. I wait a little longer, until I'm sure he's asleep, and finally I reach over and switch on my bedside lamp. Climbing out of bed, I pull my backpack out from the cupboard and open the top. Fortunately, the dead cat hasn't started to smell yet, so I carefully remove him and place him in a plastic box I took from the kitchen. I carefully pull the scissors out of his head, and a small dollop of blood comes out, but not too much; I guess he's started to congeal, now that he's been dead for a few hours. I arrange him so that he's as spread out as possible, and then finally I place the lid on the box.
Sneaking out of my room, I go over to my father's door and immediately hear him snoring. I head downstairs, open the back door and go into the garden. It's pretty overgrown out here, and my father only comes out to smoke, so I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be too hard to hide the box containing the cat. I hurry around to the side of the house and sit on the cold grass, before opening the box and looking down at the cat. So far, to be honest, it's a little disappointing: it looks just like a regular cat, and apart from the wound in its head you wouldn't even know that anything was wrong. As it's large, dead eyes stare up at me, I start to feel a little guilty. I mean, as far as I know, the cat didn't do anything to deserve being killed; I just hope that there wasn't too much pain as the scissors entered his brain.
"Sorry again," I whisper.
He doesn't reply.
Reaching into the box, I move one of his paws, and I can immediately tell that he's starting to get stiff. I managed to go on a website on my father's computer earlier, and apparently bodies get hard when they've been dead for a few hours. There's no sign of maggots or rotting, but it's a little too soon for any of that. Still, although everything looks normal, I'm fairly sure that inside the cat, the process of decomposition has already begun. It'll be slow at first, but gradually the skin will start to get eaten away. Smiling in the moonlight, I imagine what it would be like if it turned out the cat wasn't dead at all; I imagine him suddenly leaping out of the box and running off, having faked his death so he'd have a chance of escaping. Fortunately, I've already made double sure that there's no chance of anything like that happening. His body is dead, and his soul... Well, I don't believe in souls. When the body dies, the mind dies too.
"Your death won't be in vain," I explain as I stare at him. "I'm going to keep
a diary of everything that happens to you. This is a big project, so we'll be doing this for a few months, okay?" I pause for a moment. "If you're really good, and if you get lots of nice juicy maggots, I might even take you for pancakes and an ice cream. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I hesitate for a moment, and then I reach down and ruffle the fur around his ears. "It's okay," I add. "I know you're a little shy". I smile. Obviously I know the cat is dead, but I bet some people would be stupid enough to believe that it could still be alive. It's kind of fun to imagine a zombie cat roaming across the grass, trying to eat everything it finds.
Although the dead cat is fun, I can't help thinking how much more fun this whole situation would have been if I'd been able to get hold of my mother's body. I'd have needed a much bigger box, and it would have been harder to get her back home from the cemetery, but then I'd have been able to feel her arms get stiff, and I'd be able to watch as her body slowly decayed and rotted to nothing. Smiling, I imagine the flies and maggots crawling across her flesh; a human body must be a big feast for bugs, so the flies would probably end up being really big and meaty. Maybe it's a little morbid to be thinking about this kind of thing, but it'd still have been something fascinating to watch. Human bodies change so slowly when people are alive; when they die and finally get interesting, they're immediately hidden away in the ground or, even worse, they're burned. Sometimes I wonder why adults make the decisions they make; if my father had just been a little more thoughtful, I could be sitting here with my mother's dead body at this very moment.
Realizing that there's little chance of anything interesting happening to the cat's body tonight, I carefully place the lid on the box and slide it into a small gap behind the woodshed. I hurry back into the house, making sure to lock the door so that my father won't realize I've been outside. I walk over to the kitchen counter and see an empty wine glass next to the sink. After I've wiped my feet on a tea towel, I go back upstairs. My father is still snoring, which means he's got no idea that I ever got out of bed. I like knowing that I can do things that he doesn't know about; it makes me feel good to realize he's not completely in control. Right now, he thinks I'm fast asleep and being good, when in fact I've been outside with the dead cat. If he knew what I'd done, he'd be angry.
