Prestige is a fantasy, isn’t it? It can be spun and finagled so that anything, from a decrepit stone building to workers of ill-repute, can appear as the chosen ones, as the elite.
Redwood has always been an expert, after all, at covering up, at making things glitter that really should scream.
Chapter Five
Ispent the next night studying 5B whenever I had a free moment—which wasn’t often, in truth. I learned that although the staff at Redwood were discreet, they weren’t always reliable. It seemed that the Friday flu was extremely contagious in the asylum—and so was the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday flu. Luckily, the loneliness of my apartment and the curiosity surrounding the patients made it easier to come to work, even on my days off. When I was busy, there wasn’t time to be lost in the past, either, which was an added bonus. Quickly, I found myself consumed by the asylum. It sometimes felt like I actually lived there, too. I did, truthfully.
When I had a chance to take his meds to him, I decided I would try to memorize the phrases he spewed. I needed to write it all down and see if I could piece it together. I had taken on the role of an investigator or detective in a case that was most likely senseless but significant to me all the same.
I was disappointed, thus, that my case solving gusto came to a halt the next night. I found him despondent, staring blankly at the corner of the room. The drawings were gone. After taking his medicine, he went back to his bed, facing away from me. He didn’t even say a word.
“Are you okay?” I asked, disappointed that there would be no more clues.
“You didn’t take them,” he responded. The icy silence filled the room between us.
“Take what?”
He didn’t turn to look at me, still facing the wall. “Them.”
I tried to engage him, but there was nothing left to say. I left 5B confused—and angry at myself. I was searching for logic in a man whose mind had long since failed to be logical. What did I expect to gain? Still, at break, I asked Anna what had happened to his drawings.
“He got angry this morning, I guess. Shredded the pictures and started eating them. He said something about how you didn’t take them home. If he keeps showing this unnatural attachment to you, we might have to limit your contact with him. Wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” she announced.
My stomach lurched. I kept my face neutral, but I knew there was no way I was avoiding 5B. I was the potential answer. No one else would take the time. I could figure out what was going on with him.
Maybe it was loneliness. I hadn’t taken time to process what it was like leaving home and starting over in a new town with no connection. Maybe it was that I felt like I had some making up to do. Regardless, I harbored an inexplicable and perhaps even bizarre pull to him, like I was meant to help him. After all, he did say they told him I was coming. And odd as it sounded, a part of me perhaps wanted, no needed, to believe it was true. I needed to keep the hope alive that I still had purpose in the crazy, big world.
When break ended, I was sent to retrieve linens from the basement’s laundry room, a spot of the asylum I hadn’t yet visited. I was in the back corner of the musty basement room pulling out dry towels and sheets considering 5B’s antics when I heard a crash further back. Driven forward by curiosity but also fearful of finding a huge rat or another one of Redwood’s lost souls, I crept forward into the darkness. I pulled out my phone to use the light, shining it about.
Sitting on a stool in the back corner, a small figure with pigtails faced the wall.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” Panic rose. Had someone left a door unlocked? Had she wandered away during activity time? I took a step forward, her red hair shining in my flashlight.
I reached a hand out to touch her shoulder, but her head darted to the left, her neck turning at an odd angle that stopped me in my step. My light shined on her face, if one could call it that. It was blackened as if decayed, her skin dripping. Her nose was flattened to her face, her whole body distorted. Deep gouges covered her body, and her head wobbled and bobbled on top of it. Her head flapped wildly back, blackish blood congealed.
“Come on, what room are you in?” I ignored all rational thought that this girl couldn’t possibly be alive. I would have to ask Anna what happened to the poor thing, see what floor she was on.
The figure walked toward me slowly, creeping through the darkened, musty room. There was an inexplicable haze around her, a thick fog that appeared transcendent. I’d never seen my flashlight cast that sort of glow, almost like a movie. I tried not to look directly at her face, the red braids framing her in a graceful way that only brought more attention to the horror of her. She wore a yellow dress, a beaming, neon brightness in the spotlight of my flashlight.
She stopped a foot away from me, raised a hand, and her bent, crooked finger pointed at me. The eyes, bloody and protruding, somehow managed to glare. My heart raced, my stomach dropping again. I could no longer deny it in my mind. This wasn’t a resident, not a current one.
“Who are you?” I asked on a whim, as if it would be sensical for the being to answer me. Still, the mind clings to reason when faced with impossible shreds of craziness.
She did answer me, but with a shriek instead of words. A ringing thumped into my skull like an anvil hitting a bell. The noise was at a decibel that shredded every fiber of my body. I wondered if there was some sort of a natural disaster happening, if the whole place was coming down. I slammed my hands against my ears, but it only intensified the sound. My phone’s flashlight beamed at another wall, the little girl now out of my sight. This terrified me even more, so I pulled a hand away from my right ear to shine the light back. I fought through the pain, my eyes squinting to search for her.
But she was gone. I flashed the light all about the room, looking for the girl, but there was no sign of her. After a long moment, the noise finally stopped. Shaken, I dashed from the basement room, heading to the nearby elevator and pounding on the buttons. Tears and terror rendered me incapable of processing a thing, incapable of functioning, in truth. My shaking hands and sinking stomach made me feel woozy.
Another nurse, an elderly gentleman, was in the elevator when the doors opened.
“What happened?” I asked, breathing heavily.
He stared, confused. “What?”
“That noise? Did you hear it?” I choked out the words between gasps for air.
He studied me, looking very directly at my badge on my chest. Perhaps he was worried he’d found an escapee, too. “I didn’t hear anything, ma’am,” he replied, his face scrunched to accentuate his confusion.
The elevator doors shut as he got out, warily observing me with his hands in his pockets. I went up to floor five, my fingers pressing against my forehead. It still ached from the ear-splitting noise. What the hell?
Had I met another Josephine, this one from the basement? That had to be it, I realized with a chill. Why hadn’t anyone warned me?
When I got back to the desk on floor five, a bit steadier but still stressed from the encounter, Anna was doing some paperwork.
“Did you forget the sheets?” she asked, looking at my empty hands.
“Anna, why didn’t you tell me about the ghost girl down there? She scared the shit out of me. I thought someone had escaped, and that noise . . .” I rambled on. It didn’t even strike me as crazy that ghosts and hauntings were now a part of my daily language.
Anna put up a hand. “Whoa, slow down. What ghost girl? In the laundry? I’ve never heard or seen of any ghosts in the laundry. We’ve got Josephine, the Drowning Girl, and a few others. But none in the basement that I’ve ever heard of.”
“But there was a girl. She had red hair, braided, and her face was a mess. It was all melted and contorted. And there was this insane sound,” I argued.
Anna shook her head. “Darlin’, I’ve been here for as long as anyone, and I know all the horror stories from this place. There’s no laundry ghost, and no red-haired, smashed face girl. Not that I’ve
been apprised of. If you saw someone, she must be yours.”
“Mine?” I asked, not liking the sound of that.
Anna shrugged. “She doesn’t belong to any of us, is all I’m saying. Maybe you’ve just been working too many hours, and the whole Josephine thing got you freaked out. A weary mind can make up all sorts of oddities. Just ask the people around here. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll go get that laundry. And I’ll keep my eye out for a, what is it? Red-haired girl with a melted face?” Anna offered a sweet smile, but to me, it looked pitying.
I needed to get a grip. I hadn’t been this stressed since . . .
***
That night, I had the dream again. I woke up in a sweat, wondering how anyone stayed sane at a place like Redwood. Wondering if anyone actually did. The perspiration poured down my face as I got a glass of water, feeling like I was, in many ways, drowning.
The Drowning Girl
Drowning is a terrible way to die. Many are convinced it is like floating peacefully upward. Nevertheless, if you have ever, by chance, witnessed an actual drowning, you know the choking, sputtering, lungs on fire feeling is far from peaceful. Just ask the staff on the second floor of Redwood.
It is on the second floor of Redwood that the Drowning Girl presides, as she is affectionately called by the staff. Her real name, Rebecca Fields, has long since been obliterated from the oral history passed down in the asylum, but in some ways, the fault is purely her own. She’s made a new name for herself amongst the patients and the staff.
During the day, the Drowning Girl is quiet, amicable even. Sometimes residents claim to see her swollen blue face peeking in through the windows, but it is all in good fun. She has been known to wave to a few residents in a show of greeting, and they often wave back. The nurses on floor two have seen her with their own eyes, if only from their peripherals, so they know she is not simply a figment of the overactive and irrational imaginations of Redwood’s lost. The girl jauntily skips about, playfully flickering light switches or creaking open the large, hospital-like white doors that were installed during the great renovation of 1985.
But at night, it is all a different story. The Drowning Girl changes, as many of the residents do. The staff on floor two are cautious when they are ambling about the floor, especially during the month of May. Records show that is the month she perished due to a lung infection—but as with all things in Redwood, the true account has been passed down through the workers who run the asylum. Shaped by history and marred by time, certainly some elements of fantasy have been added. However, there is hardly one current worker who would argue that clearly Rebecca Fields did not, in fact, die of a lung infection, at least not of natural causes.
At night, the Drowning Girl turns into a terrifying sight indeed. Lurking about corners, creeping on the ceiling, her face bulges as she screams in agony, her shrieks mingling with the terrified cries of Redwood’s most vocal residents. Her anguish is palpable through her sputtering and coughing, and the puddles of water she leaves are a tripping hazard. Sometimes, especially in May, the puddles have been noted to be red and sticky, perhaps made of blood.
When the Drowning Girl comes along in the hallways, the staff on floor two do not go into the staff bathroom on the floor. To do so incites an anger that is inexplicable and unexpected from a girl her size. She has been noted to fling open stall doors so hard they have given a few workers a concussion. Items are thrown, tiles in the wall cracked. Her rage in that bathroom, nevertheless, is understandable—because it is said that in that bathroom on floor two, her main nurse drowned her in the toilet one muggy May night.
Rebecca had been abandoned in Redwood in the 1930s for her morose behavior and penchant for the occult—meaning she murdered the neighbor’s dog and often talked about death. Certainly, the fact that her older brother slaughtered her mother in front of her perhaps had something to do with it, but at the time, the elite Mr. Fields wanted nothing more than to escape to his Florida estate with his new mistress. Rid of both children, he was free to do just that.
Rebecca, according to her file, was a difficult resident. Biting, screaming at high decibels, refusing to take her medicine. She fought back, especially against the female nurses. And at the time, the notorious Nurse Hope—an ironic name, certainly—was in charge of floor two. In addition to accusations of sexual abuse with some of the male residents of floor two, Nurse Hope was accused of physically abusive tendencies. These, of course, were ignored thanks to her highly qualified medical knowledge and her father’s reputation as one of the board of directors at that time.
Rebecca’s death at the age of twelve was written off and forgotten, expunged from memory by the officials and the records and the society that failed her. But in the walls of Redwood, her story passed down, of the drowning in the toilet one late night by a frustrated Nurse Hope. And it passed down in the sight of her spirit, depraved and lost, meandering through the hallways in May, a horrifying sight to those not accustomed to it.
As with all things, though, the staff of Redwood grew familiar with her appearance. She was just another sight in the hallways of horrors. Still, at Redwood, there is scarcely a lack of frights to be seen. What could be more startling than a human mind gone rotten or gone altogether? A few ghosts and spirits lurking about, therefore, do not really stir those who have committed to a career at Redwood. They are just living legends in the walls of an exotic community of confusion, complexities, and abandonment. Then again, as many of the workers will admit, their own places in society, for one reason or another, are tenuous at best. Many of them have their own connections with loss, with guilt, with potential madness. Perhaps, thus, the Drowning Girl and the others like her fail to scare the staff away because at least in the madness, there is company and companionship.
Or perhaps it is the curse of Redwood, the other rumored legend that flies through the lips of the gossips—that once Redwood gets its claws in you, there’s no leaving. No matter how badly you want to.
Just ask the long-time residents who have become fixtures in their own right, exhibits in the decaying museum that Redwood has become. Their clammy fingers on the windows paw for freedom, but their time on display is never over. Not even after death.
Chapter Six
Acrash behind me startled me from my focus on my computer. I turned from the archaic machine, swiveling back in my chair on floor five. Anna was making rounds alone while I tidied up some paperwork and entered some information. My legs and feet were relieved to be at rest, but my heart pattered at the sound. My eyes scanned the nearby hallway.
No one.
I exhaled. Josephine. At it again.
But a gurgling noise echoed behind me. The computer screen flickered, and the noise continued. This time, it was close enough to give me chills.
“Go away, please. There’s no helping you now,” I replied, assuming Josephine must be up to her antics. After the words were out, I felt ridiculously guilty for the harshness of my words. I shook my head, knowing madness really was all about perspective. We’re all a little mad, in truth.
Besides the guilt, I quickly came to regret the words I spewed into the darkness. Because as I straightened the stack of paperwork on the edge of the desk, my chair flew backwards, and I was face to face with a stapler punching at my arm.
“Shit,” I proclaimed, the stapler an inch from my face as I was pinned against the desk. The being holding the stapler emitted a muffled scream, as if he were shouting from ten feet underground. My heart beat wildly. I was ready to call for Anna.
And then behind me, from a distance, the gurgle from before. Over and over, as if moving in on me, the gurgle and the scream continued. I was certain any second the staples would be in my forehead, in my eye, on my lips. Clink, clink, clink, the stapler erratically shouted as the horrific smelling body leaned over me. Pleading, begging for mercy, tears started to fall.
And then, a quick flash. A glow of light, some gurgles and screams, and they were gone. The stapler clattered
to the floor. The smell slowly dissipated. Shaking my head to rid myself of the image of the feral stapler, I caught my breath, slowly, steadily. What the hell? Anna came back a few moments later, but I hadn’t moved. I was frozen in place, wondering how anyone could work at Redwood. I began to think that Anna and Roxy had lied, that there were far more paranormal activities than they’d described. And there were far more dangerous paranormal occurrences than they’d like me to believe.
“What’s wrong?” Anna asked, and I turned to look at her as she maneuvered around the desk.
“I don’t know. The ghosts. There were several I think. They had a stapler. And he was covered in dirt.”
Anna stared at me, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Me neither,” I said. Anna picked up the stapler and the scissors that had also fallen to the ground, setting them back on the desk. I realized somberly that if you were already mentally unstable, it would be enough to drive you mad.
Anna perused me, as if she wanted to say something. I looked at her, shaking my head.
“You don’t believe me,” I announced incredulously. My stomach sank at the thought that here, with all of the things accepted as gospel truth, I wasn’t believed.
“No, it isn’t that. It’s just—they seem to be heightened around you. The spirits. I’ve never seen them so active. You’re seeing ones none of us have ever seen. Sure, we know this place has unwelcome energies, has spirits who aren’t at peace. But you just seem to be encountering more. And—”
“And what?” I asked as she cast her eyes downward. She took a beat and then looked back at me with her chocolatey eyes.
“We’ve never seen them act belligerently, not to the staff who are kind.”
The Redwood Asylum: A Paranormal Horror Page 4
