Enter If You Dare

by Alyson Larrabee

  The fact that Wyatt doesn’t qualify his apology with any excuses makes me feel better. After all, how could he have explained? It’s all so farfetched. I’m still having difficulty understanding, but I’m getting there. I know that I really want to be in this together with Wyatt.

  “Promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I need to always know if it’s really you or if it’s Daniel taking over. Don’t ever surprise me again like you did the first time.”

  “I promise I’ll never do that again, Annabelle.”

  “Thank you. At least now I’ll be able to tell the difference as soon as you touch me.”

  “How?”

  “When you’re you, you’re warm. Incredibly warm all over. You’re like a human Jacuzzi. I sunk into your lap last night and felt this wonderful melting feeling.”

  “Here, sink into it right now.” He tries to pull me into his lap and it’s tempting, but I push him away.

  “No, we’re talking. This is serious. When you channeled Daniel, you felt unnaturally cold. Last night, when we were kissing, you felt really warm.”

  “This is torture, sitting here with you, talking about kissing and looking at you and not touching you. You look so cute. Mmmmm.” He breathes in. “You smell like butter and salt and vanilla, like a popcorn flavored sugar cookie. I need to cuddle with you, just a little. C’mon, Annabelle.”

  “No, because I’m trying to make an important point here. You were in control when we were kissing. Daniel didn’t take over. We can’t be in this relationship and kiss and be close if I have to worry about Daniel taking over. I need to know that it’s you I’m kissing, not someone who’s been dead for more than twenty years. And last night I knew. You didn’t let him in. I would’ve felt the cold if you had.”

  “You’re right. I kissed you, not Daniel. Both times I let Daniel in, it was a conscious decision. He can’t just take over, not when I’m kissing you, not any other time. I’m in control and I’ll never surprise you again. Don’t worry.”

  “That means when he did take over, you had to allow it. You had to let him, maybe even invite him. Tell me more about last Sunday, when you channeled Daniel during the thunderstorm.”

  Wyatt sighs and starts confessing everything. “I wanted it to happen. I staged things so it would happen. I purposely got you alone and held you and thought about it. I focused on letting Daniel in.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  “It scared the hell out of me. I felt like I was dead, but I wasn’t really dead. I still knew what was happening but I didn’t perceive it with my five senses. Daniel had those. He controlled my body and my mind, the actual gray matter of my brain. I sort of half-traded places with Daniel. He got to be me, but I wasn’t him. I was still myself, but without my body. I’m doing my best to explain.”

  “You’re doing a great job.”

  “Without physically hearing or seeing anything that happened between you and Daniel, I still knew everything. I felt aware and I remembered what happened afterwards. When Daniel finally left my body, I felt hungry right away and about an hour later I was exhausted. Nathaniel told me that would happen every time, so I have to be careful; like I shouldn’t drive when the exhaustion sets in.”

  “No operating heavy machinery?”

  He grins. “Right, any more questions?”

  “Can you take back your body whenever you want to?”

  “That’s the tricky part. Nathaniel and I are working on it. Both times I let Daniel in, he left on his own. I don’t know if I could reclaim my body, just because I really want to. Nathaniel thinks I can, but I haven’t had the chance to try it yet.”

  “You’re scaring me now. I need to know if you can. It’s important. Doesn’t it frighten you?”

  “Of course. The worst part was how cold I felt, cold like the grave, cold like death, freezing cold through and through, down into my bones, down into my soul.”

  I shiver just thinking about it, because I, too, have felt the cold. Afterwards, only contact with people who care about me could warm me up: Oliver, Jackson, Nathaniel, my mother, contact with the living. When he notices I’m shivering, Wyatt wraps me in his arms. “We’re in this together, right, Annabelle?”

  “Yes, we’re in this together, as long as you keep telling me the truth, no more secrets and no more surprises.”

  “I promise.” And we seal the deal with a kiss, while on the TV screen two lovers from another century kiss, too.

  Chapter 19

  Room 209 Again

  The weekdays pass by quickly because I’m busy training hard for the race on Saturday. Wyatt’s soccer schedule’s crazy, too, and we’re both exhausted from all the fresh air and exercise. Every afternoon, I tear through the forests and paths of Eastfield, releasing all of my pent-up feelings. While my feet thump the ground in a fast rhythm, I imagine Wyatt kicking the crap out of any soccer ball that comes near his size twelve feet.

  During school, we walk to class and eat lunch together, but we’re always in a hurry. Every night we talk to each other for about a half hour on our cell phones but it never seems like enough. We won’t have any time to spend together until the weekend and I miss him so much.

  * * * *

  At the race on Saturday, finally seeing Wyatt face to face pumps me way up. I tie my personal record and fly into his arms, practically knocking him over, because I don’t slow down even after I cross the finish line. My parents are both at the race, as usual, but I’m surprised to see Oliver and Jackson. Oliver congratulates me on a great race and makes sure to talk to a lot of other kids on the team, too, because he knows them from one of his History classes or the student film club he sponsors.

  No one says anything about the trip to Wild Wood that’s scheduled to happen later.

  Finally the track meet ends and we all head for the parking lot. Oliver’s ahead of us, walking toward his car with Jackson and Wyatt. Turning around to wave at me, he calls out, “Great race! See you at three, Annabelle.”

  As I wave back, my stomach jumps with anticipation. Usually I feel calm after a race, especially when I’m pleased with my performance. But there’s nothing calm about my mood right now.

  At home, while my mother and I are eating lunch together, Mom asks if she can come to Wild Wood with us. The fact that she asks and doesn’t tell me she’s coming makes me think it’ll be okay. So she calls Oliver to run it by him.

  “I’ll stay near the van with Nathaniel and Jeff. I don’t want to crowd Annabelle. I just want to be close by and offer support. I’ll only give advice if someone asks for it.”

  She aims a meaningful look at me and I nod yes.

  Shortly before three, my mother and I pull up to the curb in front of Oliver’s house, behind Nathaniel’s van and Jackson’s hybrid SUV. We organize ourselves into two groups. Mom rides with Oliver and Jackson, in Jackson’s car, and Nathaniel, Jeff, Wyatt and I follow in the van. I love riding in the back with Jeff because he’s the best cuddler in the whole world.

  When we arrive at the deserted back road, Nathaniel parks in the same exact spot where Meg and I parked almost a year ago. After bolting out of the van, Jeff lifts his giant rear leg against a nearby tree trunk and releases a minor flood. Then he starts pacing back and forth, twitching his ears, sniffing the air and keeping watch. My four legged wingman is ready for action. Jackson sets up a canvas soccer-mom-style folding chair for my mother and Nathaniel cruises over to her side in his wheelchair. They settle in to wait and my mom waves her cell phone in the air, reminding me to call if there’s any trouble.

  Nathaniel warns us one more time.

  “Remember, Daniel’s spirit will be very powerful here because it’s the scene of his death. Be alert and careful.”

  Jeff, Oliver, Jackson, Wyatt and I head across the huge meadow and then through the woods toward the chain-link fence. Oliver’s and Jackson’s lightweight backpacks hold the minimal equipment we’ll need and leave their hands free for climbing. Bot
h guys are in their fifties, plus neither is exactly a fitness freak. But they make it over the fence okay. As Wyatt reaches for my hand, to lead me toward the fence, I pull away, turn back, rush over to Jeff and hug his big neck. He starts to whine and he never whines. I don’t think he wants me to go, but I have to.

  Wyatt puts his arm around me and leads me away from my canine buddy. We jog over to the fence together. After Wyatt climbs over, he reaches up to catch hold of me as I jump down and land, on the property of the Wild Wood Psychiatric Hospital. Once again.

  Daniel travels on the wind. The late afternoon air lies still and unseasonably warm all around us, until he speeds by, bringing the winter with him.

  I lead everyone across the fields and through the rows of abandoned graves in the cemetery. Finally we duck into the basement, using the same window Meg and I used a year ago.

  On the first floor, the waning sunlight streams through the broken windows and elongates our shadows in the narrow, intersecting halls. Wyatt grips my hand tightly and clicks on his flashlight, to illuminate the dark corners the fading daylight can’t reach. We find the first office and walk in. Oliver looks so excited I expect him to shout, “Eureka!”

  But he doesn’t. He just smiles.

  Jackson and Oliver set up shop and begin pulling open the metal drawers of the file cabinets, searching through files and folders and taking notes. They’re looking for any information they can find about the life and death of Daniel Warren. Wyatt and I make weak attempts to help, but it isn’t the type of research we’re really interested in. Thirsting for action, we both want to head upstairs to room 209. I try to be patient.

  Jackson finally finds several folders with Daniel’s name on the tabs and opens one. “Look, here are some records and notes mostly written by a nurse: Mary McGuire. She was assigned to take care of Daniel from 1981, shortly after he was admitted to the hospital, until his death in 1986.”

  He hands the papers to me.

  “We didn’t look through any of the files when we were here last fall. Meg and I were in a hurry to go upstairs and find the Lonesome Boy.”

  I give the papers back to Oliver who holds onto them carefully. Then he begins to skim through the neatly-printed words. As Oliver scans the papers in his hands, he summarizes the contents out loud for us.

  “These are some very detailed notes regarding his day-to-day routine. Not only did Daniel Warren have epilepsy, but he couldn’t speak and was also being treated for anxiety and insomnia.”

  “Wow.” I can’t believe we’re finally finding some real information about the legendary Lonesome Boy.

  Oliver continues. “Just weeks before his death, they moved him from the pediatric wing of the hospital to room 209 on the second floor. According to Mary McGuire’s notes, his seizures had become more frequent and more violent, upsetting the already agitated patients in the children’s wing. Plus the patients on the second floor were older, not young children, but teenagers and adults and Daniel was thirteen, closer to adolescence than to childhood. The hospital was crowded so he had to be placed in a room with another patient. Some of the patients on the second floor were violent and often wore restraints, including Daniel’s cellmate, whose name isn’t mentioned in Mary McGuire’s notes.”

  Oliver comments, “During the investigation, no one could find any evidence that Daniel had a roommate. Someone must’ve hidden these files when the authorities were looking into Daniel’s death.”

  Jackson offers his opinion. “Back in the eighties, not all data was stored on computers. The first search engine wasn’t invented until the nineties. It was much more difficult and time-consuming to do research then. Maybe the people conducting the investigation couldn’t go through all the files. There’s so much here: tons of file cabinets, a lot of offices. They couldn’t read everything. Some of these documents probably got overlooked. This is just a daily log, kept by a nurse; not Daniel’s doctor.”

  I can see his point. I’m already tired of standing around in the office, looking through files and listening to Jackson’s and Oliver’s theories about Daniel. I would’ve given up easily if I had to read through all of this boring stuff.

  Oliver’s not bored, however. He photographs the contents of each file meticulously, while Jackson takes notes. The camera flashes about every two or three minutes, as we read the contents of each folder, then step back so Oliver can take more pictures. Writing rapidly in handwriting so messy only he’s able to read it, Jackson scribbles indecipherable lines in a spiral notebook. We stack the documents we’ve already read on a nearby desk, intending to put them back in the files after we finish. Not until then will we move on to the next office. It seems to take forever; there’s information about every bite of food Daniel took and every dosage of every medication. Wyatt and I keep shooting each other looks. We’re dying of boredom.

  Two tall stacks of folders and documents are heaped on the dusty old desk when Oliver announces it’s time to move on. Wyatt picks up one precariously piled tower of paperwork and takes two steps toward the file cabinet. Suddenly, a cold wind swirls through the small office and blows open the top folder on Wyatt’s pile. A yellowed slip of paper, folded many times into a tiny, two-inch square, falls out at his feet. I glance over at the room’s single window. It’s closed. The withered, disintegrating curtains hang listless and silent in the stale air.

  Shivering and looking at the others, I announce, “The window’s closed and it isn’t broken, either. Where did that draft just come from?”

  “Daniel,” Wyatt answers.

  Oliver stoops down and picks up the tiny, folded paper. He opens it carefully and begins to read aloud.

  “On the day of his death, February 10, 1986, Daniel Warren followed his typical routine. As usual, the boy didn’t speak a word. Compliantly, he took his seizure medication and an additional sedative in the early evening, because he’d been agitated recently and suffered from anxiety and insomnia. His official cause of death has been reported as suffocation, due to the effects of a particularly severe epileptic seizure. I’m a nurse, not a doctor, but I believe that given the timing of the administration of his medication and the amounts and nature of those medications, he couldn’t have had a seizure severe enough to cause his death. It is my belief that he died at the hands of his roommate in room 209, a boy with a history of violent episodes, who never should have been placed in a locked room with another patient. I believe that Daniel was forcibly suffocated by his violent roommate.

  “I’ve hidden this message in one of his files, because I don’t want to lose my job, or worse, and because I have no authority in this situation. The administrators of this hospital don’t want to be blamed for Daniel’s death. They’re at fault, though, because it was an administrative decision to place Daniel in room 209 with a patient known to be violent. I also made an anonymous phone call to the press, suggesting that Daniel’s roommate facilitated his death. The doctors who placed those two boys in the same room are ultimately responsible. I fear for other patients as well, because they’ve been assigned to the same rooms as violent patients. Daniel wasn’t the only one. Signed: Mary McGuire, RN. Dated: February 12, 1986.”

  We all stand there, flabbergasted. Jackson finds his voice first. “We need more information. Let’s get these files back into place. Oliver, we should keep the note. Do you have a baggy or something?”

  “Yes.” Oliver shuffles through the contents of his backpack and produces a zip-lock sandwich bag. Then he folds the note back the way he found it, places it inside and seals it. He puts the fragile document into the backpack and begins to give directions.

  “I thought we had thoroughly searched this office for information related to Daniel’s life and death. Then Mary McGuire’s note turned up. Before we move on to another office, we need to search through all the folders again to see if there are any more hidden documents tucked away inside them. We missed this one. We might’ve missed another.”

  Before I can stop myself, I heave out a lou
d sigh. Too late, I clamp my hand over my mouth as if a burp just escaped. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, Oliver.”

  Wyatt comes to my defense. “We’re just bored with all the paperwork. I want to go upstairs to room 209 before it gets too dark. I know we have flashlights, but I want to see the whole room in natural light. The way it looked when Daniel lived there. I promise we’ll be careful.”

  Oliver warns us, “Go ahead, just call my cell if anything happens and I mean anything. Jackson and I can be up there in less than a minute. Be super cautious. Don’t try something stupid.”

  “Don’t worry. Nathaniel taught me how to keep Daniel out and let him in when I want to. I’m in control. Let’s go, Annabelle.”

  He snatches my hand and hauls me out of the office, before Oliver has a chance to reconsider.

  I don’t need any persuading. Finding the hidden note written by Nurse Mary McGuire is the only exciting thing that’s happened since we entered the hospital. I’ve mostly felt bored to death up until a few seconds ago.

  Chapter 20

  The Open Door

  Wyatt lets go of my hand and we race each other through the hallway and up the stairs. Anything’s better than reading through all the stuff in those dusty old files. I’m so ready for action that I forget to be afraid. Plus, we have our cell phones. Oliver and Jackson can be with us in an instant if we need them.

  Upstairs, most of the pale green paint flaked off the mangy walls years ago and now this sad confetti litters the floor. All kinds of crap crumbles and crunches under our feet as we jog along. Cobwebs hang in every corner. Cruising past the many closed doors, we head toward the only open one. As we slow down, our breathing echoes through the emptiness. I’ve never heard a sound so hollow.

  “Here it is, Annabelle, room 209. Are you sure you’re ready?”

  Mutely, I nod yes.

  Hand-in-hand, we step inside the room which has haunted my dreams and waking hours for almost a year now.