The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2)

by Jean Nicole Rivers

  “What?” she said to herself when she realized that the door was locked. Blaire twisted the door handle frantically. The boy cried out once again.

  “I’m coming,” she yelled.

  Blaire raced down the hall and back up the stairs where she passed Vesna, who had shuffled to the door of her room in a tattered robe. “What are you doing?” the bitter-faced woman asked. Blaire ignored the question, pushing passed her and into her own room, where she pulled open her drawer to retrieve the keys which clanked loudly, waking Travis.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “They are locked up! They have them locked up like animals!” she shouted, barely realizing she was yelling as she sprinted back down the hall, keys in hand. At the boys’ door again, she reviewed the keys desperately, driving a new key into the lock with each failure of the one before.

  Vesna appeared behind her, followed by Travis. “What are you doing?” Vesna asked with her hands on her hips.

  “Why are they locked up like this?” Blaire said in a rage. The entire second floor had come to life with the squeals of children. The lock released and Blaire practically catapulted herself through the door to witness a dismal sight. One boy sat straight up in bed, staring out the window aimlessly, while another boy hummed a particular tune over and over. Ivan sat completely still, watching the movements of everyone very closely. In the far corner, another small boy walked in circles. In the bed next to Ivan, a boy sat rocking back and forth continuously, only stopping the persistent movement every couple of seconds to swat away something that was not there. There was another cry, and Blaire’s eyes searched the room and found the boy who had been screaming out. He was twisted up in his bed, moaning fretfully. Blaire flipped on the lights which cast the dilapidated room in a sickening greenish hue, she raced to the bed and threw back the thin sheet that covered the boy, and she gasped.

  A sick purple color had spread across his arm, and his bone jutted out of place under the skin.

  Blaire swept the boy into her arms as gently as possible and held him close. He winced in pain.

  “Be careful,” Travis said in a whisper, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Travis inspected the injury. The boy flinched and began to cry, cutting Travis’ examination short.

  Vesna returned to her room with a huff that signaled little more than her disinterest in the drama that the Americans were attempting to stir up.

  “How did this happen?” Blaire asked Travis.

  “It happens all the time,” Ivan said with a hopeless expression.

  Travis used his finger to pull down the skin under the boy’s eyes, which revealed that the whites of his eyes had a blue-gray quality.

  “If I had to guess, I would say brittle bone disease.”

  “What is that?” Blaire questioned.

  “Brittle bone disease is where the bones are so weak that they break very easily. He has a pretty good fracture here,” Travis explained.

  “What do we do? How do we fix it?

  “Well, there’s really nothing that we can do for the disease if he has it. But for now, I’ll have to splint his arm. Give me a few minutes. I have to get some things from my office. Try to keep him calm and still, any movement can be extremely painful, and I don’t want him to go into shock,” Travis started for the door.

  He turned back to Blaire and spoke in a low voice, trying not to be heard by the children. “It’s gonna hurt,” he said.

  Blaire understood. Travis was telling her this more for her than for the boy. She was obviously emotional, and he wanted to be sure that she could handle it.

  “Ok,” Blaire told him, trying hard to give Travis the reassurance that he needed from her. Blaire looked down at the little boy, whose eyelids were pressed tightly together, translucent tears gathering just at the corners of his eyes. His entire body was covered in a layer of perspiration. With Travis gone, the room was suddenly filled with a penetrating cold. The children were all around her, but there was something more, an obscure presence, watching them.

  Growing up, Blaire always wanted to be a doctor. In high school she joined a program for young people who aspired to go into the medical field. As part of her training, every Friday afternoon she left school early for work at Gateway Community Hospital. One particularly dismal afternoon while Blaire was working, she had been sent down to the first floor emergency room to gather supplies. A chorus of rhythmic pulses from medical machinery, along with the soft chatter of the staff, greeted her as she stepped off the elevator. While in the supply room grabbing packages of syringes and alcohol swabs, she heard the entire floor burst into a whirlwind of controlled chaos.

  Stepping into the hall, Blaire saw a stretcher guided by two paramedics come flying through the double entrance doors into the emergency corridor, where a doctor and nurse sprang into action, guiding the stretcher toward the operating room. In a trance-like state, Blaire watched the frantic activity that suddenly seemed to be happening in slow motion. Everyone’s lips were moving, but Blaire found herself trapped in a dome of silence, and she couldn’t hear a thing. Blaire jumped back, pressing her body tightly against the wall as the stretcher nearly mowed her down. She only caught a glimpse of the man, but his skin, the skin that he had left, was raw. Most of his clothing had been burned away, but some remained, charred into his flesh. Blaire crept toward the emergency operating room, stood on her tiptoes and peered into the window, where she observed the hurried movements of the doctors and nurses, and then she saw him. As she glimpsed his tortured eyes, sound abruptly penetrated her from all angles. The man’s screams paralyzed her, while the world around her blazed into audible life, and she could feel his pain. Mixed in with his agonizing howls were other familiar cries, the cries of her mother.

  Her mother called out to her in a wave of excruciating agony. BLAIRE!

  Blaire’s throat was painfully dry as she turned away from the man. Calmly, she placed the supplies down on the counter of one of the nurses’ stations and found the water fountain, bending over for a long drink. When she was no longer thirsty, she walked out of the double doors onto the street and never returned.

  Once again, Blaire found herself in room 2E of St. Sebastian, but at the same time in the backseat of her father’s sedan. The Mamas and the Papas sang cheerfully, and her mother was laughing loudly one moment, and, in the next, they were gone. All of them were gone, sucked out of the world and out of her memories.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” Blaire said to the boys, finding herself singularly confined within the walls of St. Sebastian once more. This wasn’t a burn victim, but a simple fracture with no blood. Surely, Blaire could handle that.

  “What is your name?”

  “Andre,” he whispered hoarsely through chapped lips.

  “Andre, everything is going to be okay. Nurse Wells is going to fix you up and make the pain go away, okay?”

  Andre nodded his head though he seemed skeptical.

  Travis returned with medical supplies, water, a bottle of pills, and a towel among other things. He crushed four pills and made Andre swallow them with water. Blaire used the towel to pat the boy’s forehead. A few moments later, Blaire was instructed to hold the boy tightly. Travis felt around the injury with a gentle touch and, without warning, executed a precise move that caused Andre to release a bone-chilling scream. Blaire tightened her grip and snapped her eyes shut.

  Once it was done. Travis finished by placing an ice pack on top of the injury.

  “I’m sorry, buddy,” Travis said to the boy.

  It was nearly 10 a.m. before Marko made it into his office. Since Blaire had been watching and waiting with little patience, she gave him less than a minute to settle himself before she was knocking at his door, “Marko!”

  “Come in.”

  Blaire threw the door open, hardly able to contain herself, as she stepped inside and began to pace the short floor of the office.

  “We need to talk.” Blaire’s hands were set staunchly on her hips
.

  “Have a seat. I have been told that there was an incident here last night.”

  “An incident? Yes, there was an incident, Marko.”

  Blaire didn’t take him up on his offer to sit, which Blaire saw as a ploy to calm her when she had absolutely no intention of being calmed. Her hands were trembling, as it was much too late for calmness.

  “I heard one of the children crying in the middle of the night, and when I went down to the room, the door was locked.” Blaire informed him in a voice that sounded as if it would dissolve into sobs at any moment.

  “Of course, it was locked. The doors are always locked. We lock them every night for the children’s safety. I thought I explained that by giving you keys,” Marko said, countering the attack immediately.

  “Their safety? They’re not prisoners! What if they need something or need to go to the restroom or, God forbid, this place catches fire, then what?” Blaire grabbed the thick brown hair that had found its way inside of her shirt collar and pulled it out with a swift yank.

  “Ms. Baker, many of these children have special needs, some of them can barely walk, some can barely talk, some are blind, and others have mental illness. If we leave the doors open, they could come out of their rooms unsupervised, fall down the stairs, get into the kitchen knives and hurt themselves, hurt others…maybe, even get out of the facility and down to the sea. Any number of things could happen, and we do not have enough staff to sit and watch overnight, since we can barely afford to pay the people that we have watching during the day. There is one person here overnight, and many times it is the same person that works during the day. The overnighter is only for emergencies. We work on a skeleton crew here, and again, I know that you come from a place where funding is abundant, but we do the best that we can under difficult circumstances. You are here to help us, not judge us. Whether you think so or not, I am very committed to my job. It is my life, and let me remind you, Ms. Baker, that a year from now you will get to go home, but I will not, the workers will not, and the children, certainly, will not. This is home for us, and we do the best that we can with it, and if it is not up to your standards, Ms. Baker, then maybe you should not be here.” Marko was pleased with his speech and relaxed into his chair.

  Blaire was disarmed by the rebuttal. She had been prepared to yell, scream, and curse Marko like she had never cursed anyone before. Blaire wanted to let him have it, but after hearing his explanation, though it did not completely absolve him, it was reasonable at least and admittedly, she had not expected any explanation that he could give to be even that.

  You’re not in America anymore, Emma’s words were haunting.

  “W…well…” Blaire stuttered, trying to wrangle her tongue to cooperation. “I apologize. I may have overreacted just a bit. I am just not used to this. I want to be here I assure you,” Blaire said, plopping down into the chair where she lowered her head into her palm.

  “I assume nurse Wells took care of Andre’s injury?”

  “Yes, of course,” Blaire confirmed.

  “Good. It happens to the boy quite often.”

  “If you don’t mind, Marko, I would like to purchase…donate some things to St. Sebastian, like books, blankets…if that’s okay?”

  “That will be fine,” he said as Blaire got up to leave.

  “Ms. Baker…” he called before she could exit.

  “Yes?”

  “There are locks on all of the doors at St. Sebastian, including the one to your bedroom, I suggest you use them.”

  The last student filtered out of the classroom as Blaire sat to make notes. A spirited game of Ring Around the Rosie began outside, not too far from Blaire’s open window, the euphoric play filled her with a joy reminiscent to that of being a young child again. She scribbled a few more lines on her notepad before she got up and crossed to the back window where the children were outside frolicking in merriment. Up and down each side of the building she searched for children that were not there.

  Blaire listened closely, and she could still hear the game, but it was not outside as she originally thought, it was inside, right here inside of her classroom. Blaire swung her pencil between her fingers nervously as she scanned the room allowing her ears to lead the way. They homed in on the vent in the floor along the wall. The soft singing of the children grew faint, but it was coming from inside of the vent, as she was sure of that. Blaire got down on her knees and peered into the blackness.

  “Hello,” Blaire called into the vent. She jumped at the giddy laughter that responded, and suddenly there was a scattering sound, as if a group of people were discovered in a secret hiding place, who then ran for cover. A sound rose up through the opening and into her ears. It was the desperate, undecipherable whispers of hundreds of little voices all moving about, intertwining in and out of one another like snakes in mating. She put her ear closer, trying to make out the words.

  There’s suffering in the pavement?

  What were they saying? Blaire thought to herself.

  Growing louder in each new moment, they all but peaked into a schizophrenic static that felt like it was inside of Blaire, choking up her ability to reason. She felt something moving closer to her and heard whispers that were not just senseless jabbering, but were providing, something tangible, a ladder for something terrible that was crawling toward her, up from the bowels of the building, through the dark vent on the backs of the wicked whispers. The evil was moving quickly up out of the darkness like electricity through a wire, and Blaire couldn’t tear herself away.

  There’s suffering in the pavement. The jumbled whispers were closer now. There’s suffering in the pavement. Closer. There’s suffering in the pavement. Here it comes. THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE BASEMENT! It screamed and the words were clear now. JUMP! It belched.

  Blaire was startled into movement by the growl that raged out of the vent and tried to eat her in one huge bite. She pushed herself back so harshly that the pencil slipped from her hand, and she watched in slow motion as it rolled and bounced down into the vent making a light plop, which told Blaire that it lay just beneath the grates.

  “Hey,” Travis called popping his head into the room. “You okay?” he asked when he saw her on the floor.

  “Yes, I’m fine. I just dropped my pencil in the vent, and I was trying to get it out,” Blaire explained nervously, and Travis’ expression of concern seemed to dissipate.

  “…and I heard voices in the vent.” She sat up to get a better look at his reaction.

  “Voices?” Travis eyed her strangely. “What kind of voices?”

  “Of children, whispering and playing, and then someone yelled.” She felt confident that he would hear the voices too if he listened. Travis came over and got down on the floor with her, and they both pressed their ears to the vent, their faces less than a foot from one another, listening carefully.

  Nothing.

  “I heard something, I swear,” Blaire whispered.

  Travis shrugged as he lifted himself from the floor. “You probably did. As a matter of fact, I think I heard voices from the vent in my office yesterday now that you mention it. These vents in these old buildings carry sound from room to room. The sound probably came from another room where the children were playing or talking.”

  “Of course,” Blaire thought to herself, adding out loud, “Travis, you’re a genius.”

  “I know. You ready to shop?”

  “Sure, just let me get my pencil, resources are scarce around here.” Blaire said as she noticed that the corner of the vent was not screwed in completely.

  “All right, I’ll meet you out front.” Travis disappeared into the hall.

  Blaire lifted the corner of the grate and dug her small hand inside. It moved about in the darkness, kicking up small billows of dust, and she laughed thinking that her hand scrambling around down there must look like Thing from The Addams Family. Blaire pressed her face to the cold floor, pushing her forearm further into the hole waiting for the pencil to sit at t
he tips of her fingers when suddenly she felt it, and she gave a smile that quickly transformed into a slicing scream within seconds as the demon that had been snarling at her from the vent just moments before bit into her hand with evil vengeance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Blaire’s scream melted into a pitiful sob as needles of pain shot up through every nerve of her hand. The animal would not let go; she yanked her arm from the vent and, surprisingly, it came freely with the teeth still sunk into her flesh. Travis dashed back into the room, sliding and almost falling. In seconds he had all but pulled the vent grating out of the floor, so that she could fully retrieve her damaged hand. Then she laid eyes on the deadly beast that had wreaked havoc. Blaire tried to calm herself, realizing that she was more in a panic at the fact that a demon had bit into her than in actual pain from the injury. It appeared that the deadly demon was merely a figment of her imagination, the true culprit, one of Heinrik’s mousetraps.

  Blaire felt like a dramatic child sitting on the examining table in the nurse’s office. Gray clouds bled out into the sunny sky, and the silver hue reflected on Travis’ window. Blaire winced as he finished wrapping her hand.

  “All better,” Travis said, assuring her.

  “That’s it?” Blaire asked.

  “Well, I canceled Life Flight. I do have lollipops, but their lenitive effects usually only work on children.”

  Blaire shot him a dull glare.

  Travis laughed. “There is really nothing more to be done. You don’t have any fractures or anything. You wanna know a secret?”

  “I guess,” Blaire said, staring at her bandaged hand.

  “I just wrapped it to make you feel better. The mouse trap didn’t cause any damage, but I know it hurts like hell. Keep it wrapped up for a day or two and it will be fine, but you should take it easy today. You do need to get some rest.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” Travis said as he helped her off the table. “Nurse’s orders!”

  The clouds had completely covered the sun by the time Blaire returned to her room. The coldness of her sparse quarters penetrated her as she lay in bed cradling her bum hand.