by Amy Cross
"She's already managed to get some stains on it," my father adds.
"Mom," I say after a moment, "are you scared of -"
"Juliet!" my father says, interrupting me. "I think your mother's probably too tired to answer questions right now."
"But -"
"Juliet!"
I sigh and look over at my mother. She's staring at me, but her eyes are bloodshot and yellowy, so I don't know if she can see me properly.
"Maybe we should go soon," my father says, turning to me. He's clearly a little annoyed. "Juliet, do you want to give your Mom a goodbye hug?"
I take a deep breath. My mother smells pretty weird, as if all the chemicals inside her are starting to leak out through her skin. I don't really want to touch her at all, but I figure I should at least give her a hug. Leaning close, I put my arms around her. She slowly leans her head toward me, and our cheeks brush together as she puts her arm around my body. I don't know what to do next, so I just stay like this for a moment, until suddenly I feel something wet against my belly. Looking down, I see that the drip has come loose from the vein in my mother's wrist, and blood is seeping out. I try to pull away, but my mother insists on holding me in place. I wait for a moment, until the blood coming through my dress starts to feel warm and clammy. After a brief struggle, I manage to get free from her arm and I step away from the bed. Blood is flowing slowly but steadily from her arm, and I look down to see that the whole of the front of my dress is soaked.
"Jesus!" my father says, turning to hit the alarm button so that a nurse will come.
I stare at my mother for a moment, and she stares at me, and then I turn and run screaming out of the room.
Chapter Seven
Today
"Who the hell are you?" says a large, middle-aged woman as she comes lumbering into the reception area. She stares at me for a moment, clearly not impressed. "Are you the new night girl? Are you Juliet?"
"Yeah," I say. I've been sitting on the sofa for the past few minutes, trying to get my head around everything that's happened tonight. I know I probably should have just got on with my duties, but my hands were shaking so much, I felt I couldn't do anything. I've just been sitting here, going over and over the events, trying to flatten everything out so that it makes some kind of sense. So far, I haven't had much luck.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," she continues. "Where have you been?"
"I..." I pause for a moment. "I was on the red ward most of the time. I just..." I take a deep breath, realizing I can't possibly tell her the truth. She'd think I'm insane and she'd probably just send me home if I mentioned even a word about the abandoned ward and Jennifer Mathis. "Are you Lizzie?" I ask.
She sighs. "Yes," she says firmly. "Of course I'm Lizzie. Lizzie McGuigan, manager of the night shift." She stares at me, and it's pretty clear that she's sizing me up. "I was starting to think maybe you hadn't shown up," she continues. "Have you been here since ten o'clock?"
I nod.
"Huh." She stares at me. "But you haven't been just sitting around, twiddling your thumbs?"
I shake my head. "I just got on with whatever I thought needed doing."
"Huh." Another pause as she watches me for a moment. "Okay, well this clearly isn't your fault. I've been rushed off my feet, so I didn't have much time to come and try to find you. I guess Charles just deposited you on the ward and assumed we'd bump into each other. That man is a..." She smiles. "Lesson number one, Juliet. Charles Taylor might be our manager, but he's also an incompetent idiot. Never assume that he'll do anything properly, because most of the time he drops the ball and leaves everyone else to sort out the mess he's left behind. I can't believe he just dumped you in a corridor and assumed we'd find each other. This place is like a labyrinth, especially when the residents are acting up."
"I thought..." I stare at her, trying to work out exactly what's been going on. After my experience with Jennifer, I'm loathe to just believe everything Lizzie says, but so far she seems to be okay. "I checked on the residents," I say eventually. "The ones on the red ward. I checked to see if they were okay. She said to look into their rooms and make sure they were asleep."
"She?"
"I mean..." I pause for a moment. "He. Mr. Taylor told me."
"He did, did he?" she says, seeming a little suspicious.
"One of the residents had got out of bed," I explain, "so I had to go looking for him. It... It took a while, but I found him eventually. He was wandering around on his own, so I took him back to his room."
"Would that be Ken Jenkins, by any chance?" she asks.
"Yeah," I say. "He walked off, and it took ages to find him. I was getting worried that maybe he'd got outside somehow."
"Typical," she replies. "He's always getting up in the middle of the night. Where did you find him in the end?"
"In the..." I pause. "Actually, he'd managed to get into that old part of the building, the part that's abandoned."
"Really?" She pauses for a moment, seeming a little shocked. "Well, I guess Charles left the padlock open. Pretty typical. But you got Ken back into bed, right?"
"Eventually," I say.
"And he was fine? He hadn't fallen, had he?"
"No."
"Okay," she replies. "Well, that's good. It shows initiative. The worst thing would have been if you'd just sat around waiting to be told what to do. Believe me, sometimes Charles hires girls who haven't got a clue. At least you haven't been sitting on your ass all night. I could tell someone had been cleaning, too. Good job. We'll make a successful night shift girl out of you yet."
"Thanks."
There's an awkward pause. "Something wrong?"
I open my mouth to reply, but I'm not sure what to say. Although the negative emotions I experienced in the abandoned ward have now lightened, I still feel their echoes, like bruises in my mind. I know that nothing I felt back in that part of the building was new; it was just my normal fears, which somehow became magnified to the extent that I could no longer ignore them. Now I'm out of there, I know those fears have sunk back into my subconscious, but they're still part of me. In particular, I can't help thinking about my mother, and whether Jennifer was telling the truth when she said that I'd end up dying in the same painful way.
"You know that abandoned ward?" I ask after a moment.
"Yeah," she says, looking a little uncomfortable.
"Why's it all locked up?"
She swallows hard. "It's not in use any more," she says eventually. "It was a money-saving decision. The owners decided the place would be more cost-efficient if we reduced our intake from sixteen residents to twelve, so they boarded up one of the wings and..." She flashes a fake smile at me. "Well, I'm sure you know there was also some unpleasantness in there. Just before it closed, there was an incident with one of the nurses. It was in the local paper."
"Jennifer Mathis," I say.
"Yes," she replies, clearly troubled by the name. "It was a pretty tough time, as you can imagine. After everything that happened with her, everyone was glad to be able to get away from that part of the building. Bad memories, you know?"
"What was she like?" I ask.
"She was a nice girl. Friendly, a little quiet. Not the kind of person you'd ever think would do something like that." She pauses for a moment. "Actually, after she died, they broke into her apartment and found some pretty dark stuff. Turns out she was into weird fetishes and... well, I don't know, the kind of thing that normal people wouldn't be into, if you know what I mean. Just goes to show, you can never really know what someone's like. They might seem meek and quiet on the outside, but inside they might be totally different." She swallows hard. "Now, do you want to come with me and learn the ropes?"
"Sure," I say, getting up and following her through to the office, where she takes some papers from one of the filing cabinets. I feel kind of dazed, as if I haven't quite recovered from everything that happened to me tonight.
"You need to sign some forms," she says. "Just
regular paperwork that everyone signs when they come to work at Crestview. It covers things like liability, disclosure agreements, things like that." She slides the forms over to me, along with a pen. "You're working here for the whole summer, right?"
"Yeah," I say, staring at the forms. There's a part of me that wants to run screaming out of this place and never come back, but there's another part of me that wants to stay and understand what happened tonight. After all, those emotions were a part of me, and I feel like maybe I could get them under control a little better. If I was strong enough to get out of there, maybe I'm strong enough to go back in and face them again. I guess at heart I'm just curious; despite the fact that I'm scared, I really want to know what happened tonight. I want to go back in there and face that force again. I should be terrified; instead, I'm fascinated.
"Sign up, then," Lizzie says, "and then I can show you how we do things around here."
I quickly sign the forms, before I get a chance to change my mind. I need to prepare properly, and have some kind of plan, but I want to go to the abandoned ward again one night, and face up to my fears properly.
"Welcome to the team," Lizzie says, putting the forms away before leading me back out to the reception area. For the next hour, we walk the wards and she explains how the job works. She tells me all about the various responsibilities we have to the residents, and she explains their needs. She lets me know that there are certain things I'm allowed to do, and certain things I can't do under any circumstances, and she's very careful to make sure I understand that I must never, ever attempt to provide medical treatment to any of the residents. Eventually she tells me it's time for us to check on the residents once again, so she sends me off to the red ward so I can make sure no-one has got up and started wandering about. Fortunately, this time all the doors are closed, and I carefully check each room to make sure that the residents are asleep. When I get to the final door, however, I look into the room and find that Mr. Jenkins is sitting on the edge of his bed.
"Hey," I say, keeping my voice down so that I don't wake any of the others. "Are you okay?"
He looks up at me. "I knew you couldn't keep away," he says with a smile. He leans over and pats the bedsheets. "Fancy keeping an old man warm at night, do you?"
"I'm just making sure you don't need anything," I tell him.
"You worried I might go wandering off again?" he asks.
"A little. You've got history."
"I suppose that's fair," he says. "A pretty girl like you doesn't want to spend her night chasing after an old fart like me." He pauses for a moment. "So did you see her?"
I stare at him. "See who?"
He smiles. "Are you staying?"
"I've got another shift tomorrow," I say. "Who do you think I might have seen?"
He smiles. "You didn't see her. If you'd seen her, you wouldn't still be here, not if you're right in the head."
"Good night," I say.
I pull the door shut and stand alone in the corridor for a moment. I feel as if someone is watching me, and eventually I become convinced that Jennifer Mathis is standing right behind me. At first, I'm scared to turn around, because I don't want to look into her eyes again. Eventually, however, I realize that there's nothing she can do to me, not while we're away from the abandoned ward. For whatever reason, her powers seem to be confined to that part of the building, so I take a deep breath and decide I'm going to turn and face her. I pause a little longer, reminding myself that I have to be strong, and feeling as if her eyes are burning into the back of my head. I have to show her, and show myself, that I'm not scared of her. Finally, I take a deep breath and turn around.
There's no-one there.
Chapter Eight
Eleven years ago
"So do you remember what we talked about yesterday?" my father asks as we sit at the kitchen table. It's 8am and I'm supposed to be eating my breakfast, but I feel kind of sick. I heard the phone ring a few hours ago, and I know what's coming. "About your mother?" he continues. "Do you remember when we -"
"I know she's dead," I say suddenly.
"You know?" he replies, seeming a little surprised.
"I guessed," I say, swallowing a spoonful of cereal. "I heard you on the phone." It's true: the phone rang at about 5am, and I was already awake anyway, so I heard my father talking to someone for a few minutes. He asked whether 'it' had been peaceful, and whether 'it' has been painful. I didn't hear the answers. Although I'm only seven years old, I was still able to work out what he was talking about.
There's an awkward pause. "She wasn't in pain at the end," he says. "She was asleep when it happened, so she didn't even know. The most important thing is that you remember she loved you very much, and that she would never have gone away if she had a choice. Everyone did the best they could, but sometimes bad things happen. You just have to focus on the good memories."
"I know," I say, feeling kind of numb. "Do you know what her last words were?"
"I'm sorry," he replies, "I don't. I can ask one of the nurses, though."
"I'd like to know," I say, feeling that it's somehow important. I can't help thinking that if my mother knew she was about to die, she'd have said something important at the end, something profound; maybe she even sent me a message.
"I'm going to tell your teachers," he continues after a moment. "They'll make sure that everything's okay at school."
"When do I have to go back?" I ask.
"You'll go today, as normal."
"Today?" I ask, suddenly feeling a horrible sense of nausea in the pit of my stomach. I'd assumed that I would have at least a week off, and it never occurred to me that he might send me to school straight away.
"Your Mom and I talked about it," he continues, "and we decided it'd be best to keep everything as normal as possible. It's better for you to be at school with your friends instead of sitting around here. The last thing you need to do is fall behind in class. Anyway, I've got to go and sort out some stuff, so it's best if..." He pauses for a moment. "You'll be fine, Juliet. Just go to school and focus on normal things. Your Mom would want you to keep on with your life."
I look down at my cereal. "Can I have one day off?" I ask. "Just one?"
"It's not a good idea," he replies. "Like I said, your Mom and I talked it over quite extensively, and we decided to minimize the disruption to your life as much as possible. It might seem hard right now, but you'll be glad later." He gets up and walks around the table, and then he kneels next to me. "Look at me, Juliet."
I turn to face him, even though I know I won't like what he says.
"Part of being brave is about doing things you don't want to do. I have to go and do some things today that I don't want to do, and you have to do the same. Okay?"
"Okay," I say, realizing there's no point arguing with him. He's obviously decided that I have to go to school, and I can't get out of it, even if I hate the idea of everyone looking at me and knowing what's happened.
"Just keep your eyes dry, put on a smile, and act like normal." He stares at me for a moment. "It's the best way, Juliet."
I nod.
"You don't want people to treat you differently, do you?"
I shake my head.
"That's my girl," he continues, giving me a brief hug. "If you act upset, people will start treating you differently, and that's not a good thing. So just be brave, okay? Don't let people see that anything's changed. Act normal. It's the best way through this, I promise. And then, after school, we'll go and have a special ice cream with all the toppings. Your choice. Is that a deal?"
I nod.
"That's my brave girl," he says. "Now you wait right here, and I'll go and get some things together before I take you to school." He grabs some tissue paper from the counter and places it on the table in front of me. "If you want to cry, there's no reason to hold it all in, okay? Just get it out now, before we leave. If you're feeling sad, Juliet, you should let it out instead of forcing it to build up inside. You understand that, don'
t you?"
I nod.
"Okay," he says, kissing the top of my head before he heads out of the room.
Sitting alone, I stare at the tissue paper and decide I probably don't want to cry. I've had long enough to prepare myself for this moment, and in a strange way I feel relieved. There's definitely a weird feeling in my stomach, as if I'm nervous about something, but basically I feel that crying would be a waste of time. My eyes feel a little heavy for a moment, but the sensation soon passes. There's something else, though; I feel as if maybe, if I turn around, my mother will be there, watching me. I pause, trying to decide whether I should turn and look, and finally I can't help myself. As I look around, however, the feeling evaporates and I'm left sitting all alone.
Epilogue
Today
"So?" my father asks as I get into the car. "How'd it go?"
"Fine," I reply, strapping myself into the safety buckle. Now that my shift is over and the sun is coming up, I feel like I'm in some kind of trance.
"Fine?" He stares at me, clearly waiting for me to give him some more details. "Come on, Juliet, don't keep me in suspense. What happened? Did you do a good job? Did you get on with the people? Did you make friends?"
"Yeah," I say, deciding I definitely don't want to tell him everything that happened. He'd only tell me I'm being stupid, so I figure there's no point giving him the opportunity. "It was pretty much how you'd expect," I add. "I just spent the night checking on patients and going to look for them if they wandered out of their rooms."
"And you've got another shift tonight?"
"Yeah," I say, taking a deep breath. "Actually, they want me almost every night. They..." I pause for a moment, before glancing out the window and seeing Crestview in the early morning light. It's the first time I've really seen the place properly, and I guess it doesn't look quite so fearsome. "I'm gonna be working most nights from now on," I continue. "I figure the pay's good, and it's not the worst job in the world. It's totally doable."
