Bedlam Lost

by Jack Castle

  Just then a radio the size of a brick on Jeb’s desk crackled. A cheerful woman’s voice with a thick Minnesota accent emanated from the tiny speaker. “Sheriff, we got a call from Doc Clemens. He says the Wahlman boys were playing in the Rakewell building when some homeless guy threatened them with a knife.”

  Jeb frowned. “Ophelia, those boys know better than to play in the Rakewell building.”

  “That’s what I told ‘em, there hon. But the doc says the boys think the homeless guy was trying to burn the place down.”

  Sheriff Jeb rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and then clicked the microphone again. “All right, tell Doc Clemens I’ll check it out straight away.” After switching the microphone off he asked Hank, “You mind tagging along?”

  When Hank nodded he added, “Probably Nuthin’ to worry about. Most likely it’s some rail bum trying to stay warm.”

  “Happen a lot?”

  “Yeah, but usually not so early in the year.” Jeb grabbed his parka from a rack in the corner and strapped on a worn leather gun belt that had seen better days. He then reached across his desk, snatched up the radio, and keyed the microphone one last time. “Ophelia, let the doc know that me and the new sheriff are en route.”

  Ophelia came back, “Want me to drive the Wahlman boys down there to meet you on site?”

  “Naw, if we find the guy, I’d rather the boys I.D. him at the station. Last thing I want is to be searching that damn labyrinth in the dark with those two knuckleheads running about.”

  “Roger, Sheriff.” Ophelia came back. There was a slight pause, “I mean, er, Jeb.”

  Jeb fastened his radio to his belt and headed for the door. “C’mon son, you might as well meet the local color now rather than later.”

  Before following Jeb out the door Hank double-checked to see both badge and firearm were clipped firmly to his belt. He was unaccustomed to carrying an untested weapon but this would likely turn out to be nothing more than a simple loitering call. At least the cylinder was fully loaded. Only a dead man carries a weapon without bullets. That voice again. Who taught him that? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember.

  Chapter 5

  The Rakewell Building

  The sun had begun to rise over the mountains but lingering shadows still cloaked the town below. Even though the drive from town only took about twenty minutes in Jeb’s patrol vehicle, Jeb drove slowly as the winding road up the mountainside was treacherous in the faint lighting.

  As the morning rays melted away the ice fog, the steel behemoth known as the Rakewell building appeared out of the mist like a ghost ship. Nine stories tall and the length of a city block, Hank could see the old military fortress was a real monster.

  Jeb’s SUV slid to a stop on the gravel driveway. They left the truck doors unlocked and the engine running to power the heater. Jeb also left the bar light activated on the roof but removed the ignition keys. That way if anyone tried to drive off with the patrol vehicle, the engine would simply shut off the moment the thief’s foot stepped on the brake pedal.

  They approached the building on the southeast corner and stood in the driveway of an old motor pool. A security fence had been drawn up around the perimeter with ‘WARNING: DO NOT ENTER’ signs every ten feet. There was a gate directly in front of them but the chain had been cut to lie like a dead snake beside the skewed section of fence.

  Jeb put his fists on his hips, “Doesn’t matter how many times we close this thing back up. Almost no point in tryin’.” He moved forward to force the gate open and held it for Hank to pass. “The military built this place back in the early forties.” Jeb said as if it were the weather, “Back in those days there were only two things in town, this building and the docks.”

  Hank squeezed through the gap and turned to hold the gate for Jeb, “Why would the military build a base way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Jeb slipped past and looked over at him. “You mean you don’t know about ‘Alaska’s Secret Port’?” Hank shook his head, so Jeb explained, “During World War II when the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands the government decided there was a need for a secret base in Alaska.”

  “The Rakewell building?” Hank craned his neck to look up at the looming structure.

  “Yep, you got it. In its heyday this place was really something; largest building in the last frontier.” Jeb said the last part with pride, as if he had worked on the construction himself. The old sheriff stared at the exterior as though imagining what it must have been like when it was first built. “This is where everybody slept, over six hundred residences in one building. They had their own hospital, school, movie theater, and gun range. Heck, they even had their own bowling alley and indoor swimming pool. Yes sir, this place was really sumthin’.”

  Hank didn’t see any of those things. In a word, the place was dilapidated. Every window was broken. The paint was so faded and covered with filth it was impossible to tell the building’s original colors.

  They headed toward an opening marked, MOTORPOOL. “Mind your head,” Jeb said, ducking under the half-open garage door literally hanging off its hinges. The sound of broken glass crunched underfoot.

  “When was the building abandoned?” Hank asked.

  “When the war ended, the base of operations moved to Anchorage.”

  “So why didn’t they renovate the building for civilian use?”

  “Asbestos, mostly. The stuff is poison and too damn expensive to tear down and ship out.”

  “Shouldn’t we be worried about inhaling this stuff?”

  “Naw. We’ll be fine. There’s no wind. Just try not to breathe too deeply or stir up any dust.”

  “That’s comforting,” Hank mumbled under his breath.

  As they moved farther into the building and away from the light, Jeb tossed him a heavy aluminum flashlight. Hank clicked the button and swept the light across the ceiling and walls. The beam revealed only glimpses of the interior. Steel girders, cancerous with rust, stuck out of the ceiling. And graffiti was written on every inch of the walls. Most notably were the words, YOU WILL ALL DIE! painted in crimson red. Below that proclamation were the words, Beware the Unfortunates. On another wall was Matthew 4:10. Hank was raised Catholic and grew up attending Sunday school, but he couldn’t recall the verse off the top of his head and made a note to look it up later.

  Journeying farther into the dark labyrinth, Hank noted there wasn’t any furniture to speak of. Anything of value or combustibility had been taken long ago or dissolved into rubble.

  They hadn’t taken more than a few steps into the adjoining hallway when Hank noticed the slanted doorways that ran up and down either side. The rooms interiors were so dark you almost needed a new word to describe the absence of light. A line from Milton’s Poem, Paradise Lost, came to mind, ‘No light, rather darkness visible’. Even the light from his flashlight seemed to fear the darkness, barely penetrating the bowels of each room’s interior. Anything could be hiding within and they wouldn’t see it coming — a bear, a crazy guy with a knife, anything.

  Being broad-shouldered and highly trained in tactical procedures, Hank was hardly scared of a couple of homeless vagrants. But every cop knows a domestic call like this one was always the most dangerous because of its unpredictability. His main concern was that Sarah would be so pissed if he got himself killed on his first day of work. Hank was also painfully reminded that he had only a flashlight, his badge, and an untested service revolver badly in need of cleaning. He felt naked without a vest or any intermediary weapons such as a baton or OC spray. Hell, I don’t even have my own radio.

  “Among the homeless, any priors?” he asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

  “Nah. For the most part, they’re harmless. They probably ran off the moment we pulled up outside. The building’s more liable to collapse than any bum attacking you. Hey, that reminds me, did you know
there used to be six working elevators in this building?” Not waiting for an answer he continued, “All the elevator doors have fallen off so mind your step when stepping into another room or you might end up taking a nose dive down an elevator shaft.”

  “Okay, thanks.” This little adventure was getting worse by the minute.

  “Oh, and watch your step, here,” Jeb announced, carefully stepping over a gaping hole in the floor. “If you don’t, you’ll find yourself in the basement real quick.”

  Hank cautiously stepped over the hole hoping the entire floor wouldn’t collapse completely. It was easy to see why the place was condemned. When he caught up with Jeb, he commented irritably, “I don’t see a fire anywhere.”

  “No, not here. The homeless usually drag empty barrel drums into the center of the building where they can stay the most warm.” Jeb stumbled over a fallen chunk of ceiling and cursed. “Usually they don’t start this early in the season though. Just the same, we’d better make sure they didn’t leave anything burning or they could end up burning down the whole damn town.” Jeb shined his light into the next room then vanished once more into the darkness. “C’mon, this way,” he called from the pitch blackness.

  Hank was about to follow Jeb’s bouncing light when the smell hit him. Whatever lay ahead reeked of death.

  And then … out of the darkness came the sound of something roaring.

  Chapter 6

  The Crazy Lady

  The darkened hallway ended in a large expansive room with windows opposite the space from a natural rock wall. The rising sun was now visible outside through the smashed-out windows spaced every four feet apart. It wasn’t much but they now had at least some light.

  The roaring sound that had raised Hank’s hackles was caused by dozens of small waterfalls flooding from multiple holes and cracks in the ceiling. The dark water cascaded into the indoor swimming pool Jeb had mentioned earlier. It must have been fed from a natural source, probably why they’d kept the wall its native rock.

  In the amber glow, Hank could just make out the water’s surface. He grimaced at the sight of the raw sewage, thick as sludge, floating on the surface.

  “Stay away from the edge,” Jeb warned. “You do not want to fall in there. Believe you, me.”

  “Really, no kidding,” Hank started to reply sarcastically, but was suddenly overpowered by the heavy odor of urine and excrement.

  Jeb chuckled at his discomfort and when Hank flashed him a look of irritation the old sheriff suggested, “Try breathing through your mouth and not your nose.”

  Hank composed himself and then the old sheriff explained, “This used to be the base swimming pool. Mostly a toilet for the homeless population now.”

  Hank fought the vile stench permeating his nostrils and the bile creeping up in his throat.“This is… this is…” struggling for words, coming up with only, “…just awful.”

  Jeb swung his light so it illuminated a stairwell on the back wall. The metallic stairs were little more than a twisted skeleton in the rotting corpse of the building.

  “Let’s try upstairs,” Jeb said, moving towards the stairwell. “Those rail bums are probably on one of the upper levels.”

  “Right behind you,” Hank replied and then gagged again from the smell.

  As they clambered up the metal stairs, and away from the light, Hank could hear Jeb wheezing in the darkness above him.

  With Jeb still on point, they exited the stairwell and moved in tandem toward the center of the building. The farther in they went the more they had to depend on their flashlights.

  On the second floor they passed a bowling alley nearly dissolved into paste. Jeb swung his flashlight over the remnants of a half-dozen lanes.

  Past the bowling alley was a large open room with several rows of decayed movie seats. “This used to be the theater. There was both a movie screen and a stage. They had it all back then. Yep, this place was really sumthin’.”

  Hank finally managed to swallow the last of the bile that had collected in his throat and answered. “Yeah … something alright.”

  Hank swung his light inside. He didn’t see any evidence of a movie screen but he could just barely make out a stage in the darkness. Despite the giant homeless toilet on the first floor, Hank had to reluctantly agree. With Jeb narrating the tour, it wasn’t hard to imagine young servicemen, nurses, and scientists in this mountain retreat.

  They climbed five more floors in the darkened stairwell. They reached the seventh floor and immediately apparent was a flickering light from deep in the bowels of the labyrinth.

  Jeb must’ve seen it too for he asked. “You wearing a vest?”

  “No,” Hank answered matter-of-factly.

  “Better stay behind me then.”

  It was against Hank’s nature to let others go before him in harm’s way but Jeb was wearing the vest so Hank wasn’t going to argue.

  Jeb moved toward the fire up ahead, its flickering flames transforming the old sheriff as he went. Hank noted the older man was now walking heel-toe and checking each room before passing in front of the doorframe. What happened to the old timer? He’d obviously been a really good cop at some point.

  Slowly, methodically, they closed on the room with the flickering light. Stalactites, formed by leaks in the ceiling and dyed rust red, framed the entrance. And inside the room the floor was covered in moss and knee high grass. It was as though they were stepping into a primeval cavern, and not another room belonging to a dilapidated building.

  In the room’s center, beneath a hole in the ceiling that beamed down morning sunlight, an old woman in her late-fifties sat in a lawn chair next to a burn barrel. All the holes in the barrel made it look like a colander, the fire flickering orange through the holes. The woman was so overweight that Hank guessed if she got up, the chair would have stuck fast to her large behind. She wore a drab scarf over her head and a long coat. One thing that didn’t add up though, was that her clothes did not belong to any homeless person Hank had ever seen; they were too clean and appeared relatively new. He couldn’t see the woman’s face because she was sitting with her back to them. She was facing the wall where an old television set sat on a milk crate. The TV was on; its screen filled with static resembling white snow.

  Hank moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jeb and asked, “I thought you said this place doesn’t have any power?”

  “It don’t,” Jeb grumped back.

  Hank followed the cord with a flashlight. It snaked through some patches of grass but the plug wasn’t plugged into any outlet. It was just lying there on the floor.

  Must be one of those battery-operated jobs.

  The television’s volume was turned up so loud Jeb had to shout over the static to project his voice to the center of the room. “Ma’am, HavenPort Sheriff’s Department.”

  Nothing.

  Hank could feel the heat from the burn barrel. The fire was really hot. Hank was immediately concerned for the woman’s safety. If he could feel the heat from where he was standing then she must be roasting alive. Or worse, her clothes would catch fire at any moment.

  They moved closer and Hank could see the woman wasn’t actually watching the television, but doing something with her hands. And really going at it too. So much so that Hank was surprised she didn’t fall over in the rickety lawn chair.

  As they closed in Hank noticed the older sheriff was so focused on the old woman he wasn’t double-checking the multiple entrances to the room. Hank gave each entrance a quick scan. As vulnerable as he felt he also tried to keep it real. After all, this was obviously just a middle age woman sitting by a burn barrel trying to stay warm.

  Jeb signaled with one finger for Hank to circle around to the left so he could come in from the right. Both men had their hands on their pistols but neither of them had drawn. Hank still couldn’t see what the older woman was doing in her
lap but he could now see her heavily made up face. She wore so much make-up she almost resembled a circus clown. Her eyes stared straight ahead, vacant, and an un-flicked cigarette dangled from her open mouth.

  The whole thing was pretty damn creepy.

  Hank had circled far enough that he could finally see what she was doing with her hands. The woman had a serrated knife in her right hand and she was madly sawing away on her left wrist. Not just superficial ‘pay-attention-to-me’ cuts either. Hank vomited in his mouth but immediately swallowed it back down. The bile burned in his throat.

  Jeb must’ve seen the knife at the same time for he yelled, “Knife!”

  Both he and Jeb pulled their guns at the same time and drew a bead on her. “Drop the knife! Hands in the air!” they ordered overtop each other.

  The woman did not seem to hear them. It was as though she were in a world all her own.

  “Wanda?” Jeb asked, his voice tinged with disbelief. “Wanda Parker?” Jeb and Hank exchanged glances. “What are you doing?”

  At this, Wanda stopped flaying her wrist. She slowly turned towards Jeb and asked, “Are you going to kill the doctors?”

  Jeb blinked away his shock.

  “They’re not real, you know.” She then raised her voice, angry, “Don’t you get it? None of this is real.” With that said, she dropped her arms to either side of the lawn chair and lowered her head, resembling a puppet with cut strings.

  Hank slowly holstered his gun.

  “What are you doing, Hank?” Jeb asked in a harsh whisper. “She’s still got the knife.”

  Hank could see the woman was still breathing. He knew the clock was ticking if they had any chance of saving her from her self-inflicted wound. “We can’t just let her sit there and bleed out.” He began walking towards her with his palms out. To Jeb he asked, “You got her?”