Caustic

by Morgan Black

  “So, you have a twin? And she’s a missing person?”

  “Yep. That pretty much sums it up.” Even though it really didn’t. But I wasn’t going to correct her.

  “So, where are you going to look? I mean, you said your parents had already gone the private detective route. What other options are there?”

  “Her old hospital. Pretty much one of the places I hate most in the entire world. But they might still have some idea of where she went, or who she spent time with while she was there. I just hope they have something.”

  “I hope they do too, Skye. Let me know if you need anything, okay? I mean, I can even drive up there if you want.”

  “No. It’s fine. I’ve got this.”

  The truth was I had no idea if I had this, but saying out loud made me feel slightly better. Even if it wasn’t true.

  SIX

  Six Years Ago

  I heard the screaming before I even realized what was happening. “Leia! Leia, my God! John, come here! Help me!”

  My father came running into the room, and lifted my sister out of the noose that was hanging from in the closet. Her diaries lay all over the floor.

  I want to die.

  I hate my life.

  Everything is different now.

  Words were all scribbled in chicken scratch all throughout the leather notebooks. Leia had been in therapy for just a couple months, when suddenly she had stopped making friends at school, wouldn’t return phone calls, and she was pulling away from me and my parents. The therapist had suggested drugs, but I felt like they just made her a zombie. Sometimes, I knew she didn’t take them because she would wring her hands constantly when she was off of them. I wondered if my parents didn’t notice, or they didn’t want to. She would babble under her breath sometimes, and she had the shifty eyes like she felt like someone was watching her. My sister was going crazy.

  I watched her fall apart over the course of the past three months, but I never expected her to do something so drastic. I didn’t know that that’s how she felt. She barely spoke to me anymore, only over dinner when my parents would ask about school. All she would say was it was okay, or that she didn’t want to go back there tomorrow. Those are her two extremes now, fine, or she hated everything. She even hated me.

  I was popular, a cheerleader, and I was dating the star quarterback on the football team. We were the quintessential small town couple, and I loved life while my sister was spiraling out of control. I knew she was jealous, while she was wearing black and binge watching videos on YouTube about Gothic bands, I was out getting a milkshake with friends after a football bonfire. We’d grown apart so quickly. Only a year before that, she would’ve loved to be in the quarterback’s convertible with me. I didn’t know what changed.

  But that night was different. My mother’s insane screams in my bedroom while I stood there doing nothing because I didn’t know what to do. My sister was hanging by a noose in our closet. She was ill, and that was the only way that my parents would describe her after that night. That she was sick and she had to go to the hospital to get better. They had me call 911, and, when the ambulance came to get her, she had come to, and was screaming about how they couldn’t take her.

  “It’s not me! I’m not the one who’s crazy. It’s not my fault!” She screamed when she came to.

  I remember her eyes locking with mine, and how I felt the tightness in my chest just watching her losing her mind. She lifted a finger from the restraints and pointed at me. “It was you! This is all your fault. This isn’t me.”

  I just stood there, the tears streaming down my face. My mother rushed over to me, and clutched me against her chest, as I cried silently. And then I watched them load her up in the back of the ambulance. I didn’t go to the hospital the next day with my parents to visit her. She didn’t want to see me anyway; she blamed me for how she felt about the world. Like her turning into a monster was my fault. Like it was something I had done to her, that I had made her that way. But I didn’t.

  Two weeks later, they found her a permanent bed at Connecticut Psychiatric. It took me almost two months to get up the courage to go see her, and then I tried every week for three months. But she refused guests every time I went. She didn’t have any friends at school, so it was just me or my parents who went to see her, and I think my grandfather went a few times.

  I missed her. I had a built-in best friend, and she abandoned me because her mind went sour. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I should have been there for her, listened more, something. Anything to save her. I would have done it. I should have.

  Every day I missed her, until I didn’t.

  SEVEN

  I had my windows down, and the rough wind whipped around my face like it was trying to grab me and pull me out of the car. Looking up at the old stone building, I could feel it trying to pull me in, to tell me its secrets. It had once been an asylum, where they did horrible experiments on people, but now it was just supposed to be a friendly place where the mentally ill went to live out their days. Actually, I’m sure the brochure didn’t say that, but that’s what it felt like. When Leia was committed, there was no date when she’d be getting out. It was like my parents had sentenced her there. She wasn’t ever coming home. And, when they visited and talked with her, they never mentioned dates or times that she would come home to visit. They said they did it to protect me, that she harbored severe anger towards me… or so her therapist told them. Maybe it was jealousy, or maybe it was something else. I didn’t know anymore.

  I turned my car off and walked up the front stone steps, looking at the huge trees on either side of me. The wind rustled through the new green leaves that were just beginning to come out. It was a brisk morning, so I had my sweater wrapped around me tightly. I had put on extra makeup, and I had my long hair in a braid off to the side. For some reason, I wanted to look put together, like, if I didn’t, that they would lock me away. Or worse, they would think I was Leia. It was unfair of me to think that. But I was judgmental, and I always had been. It was probably why I didn’t notice that Leia was going downhill as quick as she was. I was selfish, too.

  I got to the front door and rung the doorbell with a little intercom box next to it. I heard a beep, and the door unlocked. I took a deep breath and entered.

  There was a little round nurse’s station at the front entrance, before any of the other locked doors for the different wards. There was a pediatric unit all the way through elderly people. They kept all the patients separated. The nurse at the front desk was in scrubs with little teddy bears on them, so I guessed that mostly she worked with little kids. But, maybe she didn’t. I guess old people liked teddy bears, too. She smiled at me brightly as I approached, and, as hard as I tried to return it, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “How can I help you? Are you here to see a patient?” she asked in the encouraging voice.

  I put my hands on the desk, feeling the cold Formica beneath my fingers. “No, actually. I’m here about a patient who is no longer with you.” Well, that was terrible. I made it sound like my sister was dead. I tried not to think about it. “Leia Kellan, she’s my sister. She checked herself out a number of years ago, and I- we haven’t heard from her since. I know my parents were here right after she checked herself out, and collected most of her personal artifacts, but I heard that she was still coming to group for a while? At least, I think so. So, I was wondering if you still had some of her stuff? Or maybe if you knew anyone that she used to hang out with? Maybe they have some information about her.”

  She smiled at me affectionately, but there was sadness in her eyes. I knew she pitied me, and I was kind of thankful for it. At least that might mean that she had some information. “Let me look in my computer. A few years is a long time, though, you haven’t heard from her at all?”

  I shook my head. “When she came here, we weren’t on the best of terms.”

  She nodded and turned towards her computer, typing away. I waited for a moment before she
turned back toward me, “Leia Kellen, yes, I have her here. We don’t have any personal information for her, and she didn’t leave a forwarding address when she checked out, but I’m sure you already knew that. However, it looks like some of her personal belongings are still here. And she hasn’t come to group in over eighteen months, so we can give those to family. It doesn’t violate any policies after a year has passed. Everything is down in the basement storage. I’ll go get it for you. Just wait here.”

  I nodded appreciatively and walked back over near the front entrance, sitting down on a plastic chair. I watched her move toward a set of locked doors, scanning her keys, and going down a flight of stairs. I hoped there would be something in her personal artifacts that could help me, anything that could lead me in the right direction. Right now, this is the last piece of information I had to go on. I waited in silence for a minute or two, contemplating taking out my phone and playing some Candy Crush while I waited, until I heard the screaming. It was bloodcurdling, and it made my brain hurt and my skin crawl. I watched a woman fly down the stairs in front of me, and run directly into the glass door that the nurse had just walked through. She had a deranged look on her face, and her hair was all frizzy, framing her very thin appearance. She banged on the window, and looked directly at me. Suddenly, she stopped staring at me like she had seen a ghost. I wondered if she knew Leia. I stood up from my spot, considering approaching her, even though I couldn’t get to her, when two orderlies grabbed her hands from off the window, and put them behind her back. She screamed some more, and attempted to bite one of them, but the woman had a needle with her, and put an injection into her arm. She was motionless within a second. The other attendant, a man, lifted her up into his arms, and walked her back up the stairs. At the same moment, the nurse that I’d been speaking to at the front desk scanned her way through the door again with a small cardboard box.

  “Sorry about that. Sometimes, we have rough days around here.”

  She handed me the box. “Thank you.” I wondered how many rough days they had, and how many of them were attributed to Leia. Had she looked like that woman when she was in here? So lost and confused that she ran screaming into a glass door without even reacting to feeling the pain? Suddenly, I was glad that she had refused to see me. I don’t think I could’ve taken seeing her like that.

  “Would you like to sit here and look through the items? Or would you like me to open the door for you?”

  I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. “You can just open the door. I’ll look through them at home.”

  But, the truth was, I didn’t look through them at home. As soon as I got in my car, I climbed into the back seat, and dumped the box. There wasn’t much in there: a book, some letters for my parents, and a single diary. I inspected the weathered leather exterior of the book. It was hers; I knew it. Inside, lied her deepest secrets. Things she even hid from me. Stories that should never be told.

  I pried open the dried pages, praying I wouldn't find something in here that would break me. I've been broken before.

  I read the first line, and found that I was chilled to the bone.

  I want my sister dead. She did this to me. It’s all her fault.

  I quickly turned the page, as if the poison would leak off of it, and into my system, killing me right on the spot. On the next page, I found journal entries about what she had been eating, and if she had been taking her meds or not, and then I saw name, a guy’s name. Ellis Waters.

  She had a written his name everywhere. Clearly, it was someone who was important to her. As I skimmed through the pages, I found more and more entries with his name. Talking about what they discussed in group, having lunch together out in the grass one day, and how every night she thought about him before she went to sleep. If Leia was an addict, Ellis was her new drug.

  I found one entry to be particularly enlightening.

  Ellis had to talk at group today. But I could tell he didn’t want to. He was fiddling with the scars on the outside of his arms, the ones his father gave him. Before he disappeared. Sometimes, I wonder if Ellis killed him, for hurting him and his mom. But the next guy she found, well, he wasn’t very good, either. He would beat Ellis’s mom mercifully. He told me once he considered killing him, just to get him to stop. But he wasn’t fast enough.

  Today, he told us about how his mom’s boyfriend killed her, right in front of him. How she forced Ellis into the closet, and shut the door, but he could see through the slats. How she tried to fight against him, but it didn’t matter. He beat her until she stopped moving, and, then, when she asked for help, he broke her neck. Just took her face in his hands and SNAP. Ellis couldn’t even sit down while he told the story. He paced the entire time, scratching his arms like the secrets were just pouring out of his skin. By the time the therapist made him sit back down, his old wounds had opened up. I saw the blood and skin underneath his fingernails as he scratched incessantly. She called for a nurse to come clean and bandage him up, but they took him to the infirmary for the rest of the day instead. I asked my group counselor, Oliver, if I could go see him, but he said that he wasn’t taking any visitors. I wasn’t surprised. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me like that either.

  I should tell Ellis how I feel about him. How I know that we’re both not crazy, that we’re both here by mistake. I’m going to tell him soon. And, then, I’m getting the hell out of here, and taking him with me.

  There were plenty of entries after that, talking about how she and Ellis were making plans for after they were eighteen, and they could check themselves out. But, it seemed like Ellis was a little bit older than Leia, and when he turned eighteen, he left her. She still had six more months before she could check herself out, but I knew that she stayed in additional year and a half. I guessed that they had stopped talking. But this was the only journal of hers I had, and he was the only person that she mentioned multiple times. So, Ellis had to be important. He was the next step on the path to finding her.

  I pulled out my cell phone and started looking for him on Google. Thank God for technology. It only took me about five minutes to find that he was the head cook at a restaurant about two hours from here. I was already far enough away from home. Another two hours north would guarantee that I wouldn’t be going home tonight. I quickly texted my mom to explain the situation, and told her that I would find a hotel. Luckily, I had packed a bag just in case this happened. I couldn’t be sure how much information I would get.

  I shoved all Leia’s belongings back to the cardboard box except the journal. I got out of the car and slid back into the front seat, putting the journal of the passenger seat, a constant reminder of where I was going, and why. Now, if I only knew what I would find when I would get there. Then, I would have something to prepare for, because nothing so far had prepared me for this.

  EIGHT

  ELLIS

  I gazed at the water as it rushed over my hands. I scrubbed until my skin felt raw. The soap had a lemony scent to it; it was my favorite. It reminded me of spring.

  I was so glad the winter was over. There is absolutely nothing to do in the small coastal town of Fairmont when there were no tourists. Business had gotten so slow that I had actually considered joining up with one of the fishing vessels to make some extra money. I didn’t need much; I had a small cabin near the words, just one bedroom. But it was just me. I didn’t need some big lavish house for one person. And, my dog Chester, because I didn’t really have a lot of friends. When you get out of a mental hospital, people don’t really want to get to know you. Dogs, on the other hand, don’t care about your past, just if you let them sleep in the bed with you.

  As far as most people knew, I was just the quiet line cook at the local bar. Sometimes, I tended bar as well, to make extra money. I would pick up a couple extra shifts during the busy season, and summer was quickly approaching, which meant no more vacations for me. Chester and I took a couple day trips, and went snowboarding over the winter, but it’s fucking cold in th
e winter, and I hated it. Once or twice, I considered moving to a place like Florida, but I think I’d miss the New England spring and fall just a little too much. Besides, this is where I had grown up. And, even though I didn’t have any family left to speak of, it still felt like home.

  My mother was killed when I was thirteen, I was moved into a foster home pretty soon after that, but then I started showing signs of what they called extreme anger. I wondered where that came from. Maybe my mom being murdered, or the fact that both my dad and her boyfriend beat me. I hadn’t really had any good role models of men in my life, not until I met Stan. He was the owner of the restaurant, the Fisherman’s Hook. When I turned eighteen, and was allowed to leave the hospital, I checked myself out, and rode the bus as far as my money would take me. I actually probably had enough to get one more ticket go all the way up to Maine, but, when I arrived in Fairmont, the people seemed friendly. A couple even directed me to a local hotel that they knew needed a new dishwasher. I had no kitchen experience except what little I had gained when I was in the institution, but they were kind to me, and finally started teaching me how to cook. Stan’s wife owned that place. And, then, when he opened up the restaurant, he offered me the job, I worked under the head chef, but I wasn’t skilled enough to make a menu. I knew how to make simple things, I was damn good at it, and quick. Which, in the tourist season, meant we made even more money, enough to beat every other restaurant in town. Stan and Mary still lived in a small Cape Cod only five minutes from my house. They even knew the owner of the place that I bought, and got me a great deal. It was mostly a shack when I bought it, but I took some time over a couple summers to build it up. I was happy to work with my hands; it made me feel like I was contributing to something. But, I didn’t have anyone else, just me, Chester, Stan, and Mary. That was what Christmas looked like. Blood doesn’t make family, people do. And four-legged furry friends, too.