Every year, around Halloween, two or three boys would feel compelled to test their courage against Mercy House. Usually they were high school boys trying to impress a girl, and more often than not they found Sheriff Patterson waiting for them. It became something of an annual game on his part, one that he admitted to himself that he enjoyed just a little.
Biting into the baloney sandwich that his wife packed for him, Les watched the other three boys back away from the building and mill aimlessly in wait for their friend. He saw one go back to the window, stick his head back under the plywood for a minute, then return to the others. He could imagine their discomfort, feeling exposed next to that hulk of local legend.
Les didn’t like Mercy House either, and he had taken the time to do a little research to separate the fact from fiction.
Built in 1900, it operated as Hallisboro City Hospital until 1925. That year, a roof fire damaged it and the Hallisboro City Council raised the funds to build a new hospital on the other end of town. The county bought and repaired the old building in 1927, and remade it into the Cole County Mercy Memorial Hospice and Retirement Home. It then served as a retirement home for the elderly, with the top floor reserved for the mentally incapacitated.
During the mid-thirties and the Great Depression, the county converted the bottom floor into an orphanage. Young children whose parents left them to go find work, were housed and schooled there. Les was old enough to remember riding past the place a couple of times, and seeing children out playing on the hospice grounds. He wondered at the time how many would ever see their parents again.
That all ended on one stormy August night in 1938.
On that evening, while the last remnants of a hurricane shredded itself over Cole County, three children snuck upstairs in search of snacks and a little adventure. Twelve year olds Matthew Stoeger and Alan Fossey, along with Alan’s nine year old sister Cora, slipped out of their beds sometime after ten o’clock. Using the flashes of lightning to navigate, they crept their way up to the third floor pantry. There they feasted on the stash of candy that the oldsters sometimes handed out to the orphans below. Then, emboldened by their success, they chose to explore their way up to the even more forbidden fourth floor.
Due to a lapse in procedure, someone must have forgotten to lock the sliding gate that barred the way to the top floor. The kids slipped up the dark stairs, and through the second unlocked gate at the top of the stairs.
What they discovered was a realm of torture and depravity that would shock the entire town, and all administered under the approving eye of floor nurse Anna Krager.
Les remembered the lurid stories that filtered around afterward, about what happened to the patients up on that level. But only after he assumed the office of Sheriff and read through the old files, did he realize how truly twisted Anna Krager’s tastes ran. And those poor kids had no idea what they stumbled into.
The two boys were discovered, and strangled at once by Krager and her orderly. Neither noticed the small girl hiding under one of the patient’s beds. Krager sent her orderly out into the storm to dispose of the two bodies, having him take the one vehicle on the premises. Only after her assistant left, did she notice the girl slipping around the corner to sneak back down the stairs. She attempted to give chase, but it was too late.
Cora Fossey fled down the flights of stairs of Mercy House and out into the raging night. A couple of hours later, a young Baptist minister and his wife awoke to find a hysterical child screaming on their back porch. After calming her down and hearing her story, they summoned help in the form of Sheriff Carl Gartner and some of their neighbors whose kin lived at the hospice. They then set out in a group, determined to find out the facts behind the terrified girl’s story.
Nurse Krager must have been watching from the fourth floor balcony as the headlights from their cars made their slow way down old Myrtle Road. Trapped, with no vehicle to flee in, she chose another route of escape instead.
When Sheriff Gartner topped the flight of stairs out onto the fourth floor, he stepped into a charnel house. The storm howled in through the large double glass doors that opened onto the front balcony, wind driven water sheeting across the polished wood floors. Blood soaked the sheets of all the beds, and ran in rivulets that mixed with the blowing water. Krager had methodically slit the throats of all eleven patients on the floor. The next flash of lightning revealed that she had then put herself beyond all worldly justice. Her body hung from a noose tied to the light fixture in front of the rear balcony doors.
Headlines screamed, tongues wagged, and the orphans were moved to the Lutheran Community Hall on the church grounds the very next day. Two days later, the hospice’s ambulance turned up in the bottom of Hollow Creek. Neither the orderly nor the bodies of the two boys were ever found. Funerals were held, time passed, and the talk moved on to other things like the approaching war in Europe.
Mercy House continued to operate as a retirement home for another fifteen years. The county never reopened the top floor though, choosing to use it as storage for the hospice instead. It finally closed in 1953, standing derelict for the next two decades. A couple of times the county considered renovating it, but its gruesome history and the lack of funds always combined to thwart the effort.
Now it moldered as a rotting pile of brick and lumber that kids sometimes used as a stage to prove their courage. Les knew that the building’s days were now numbered. The county now looked into plans to demolish the heap, and the last thing standing in the way was a campaign by the Hallisboro Historical Society to save it. Since it seemed improbable that they could come up with the money to buy and restore the building themselves, their efforts would most likely result in just a temporary stay of execution.
“Good riddance,” Les muttered around the sandwich. A famous country singer now crooned on the radio about what goes on behind closed doors, and the sheriff hummed along with him as he reached over and pulled a Dr. Pepper out of his lunch box. Popping the top, he took a long, satisfying slug of the ice cold drink before raising the binoculars again. There were worse ways to pass an afternoon. With a relaxed sigh, he pulled out the textbook for the Greek mythology class his wife insisted he take and laid it beside him, just in case things dragged on for a while.
Focusing the binoculars back in on the building, Les made another leisurely scan of the distant ruin then froze with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. He frowned and leaned forward, peering intently through the small lenses. For a moment he squinted in silent concentration, and then all the blood drained from his face.
A second later he dropped the cruiser into gear and had it spitting gravel as he roared out onto the road and down the hill toward Mercy House.
Les Patterson was a practical man, not given to flights of fancy, but he knew what he had seen. Something just visible behind the glass doors of the rear fourth floor balcony. Something that hung there, barely swinging and turning behind the reflections in the panes.
Something in a white nurse’s uniform.
###
Dust rose around him as Bobby slid through the window and onto the littered floor. Climbing to his feet, he brushed his pants and coughed, as that made the cloud even thicker around him. The small amount of light made visibility in the small room bad enough, without having to contend with this. He moved over toward the door, careful not to kick up even more of the offending material, in an effort to reach clearer air. Once he got there, he leaned against the wall next to the door and waited for his eyes to adjust.
After he could see reasonably well in the empty little room, he leaned over to the door and started to peek out through the narrow crack where it hung ajar. Darkness brooded beyond the door, most likely a hallway where no windows existed to admit light. With gentle care, Bobby pushed the door open wider in an attempt to let more of the little room’s light into the gloom beyond. It was indeed a hallway, and he could make out a dim glow from another frosted pane of glass in a door at the other end of the hall.
> “Bobby!” came a hoarse whisper behind him.
Bobby spun, heart in his throat, to see Stevie’s head poking up in the window.
“What are you trying to do,” Bobby hissed, “give me a heart attack?” His blood pounded in his ears, and the whites of his eyes showed prominently.
“Screw this idea, Bobby. Let’s get out of here. You don’t gotta prove nuthin to us. Let’s go!”
“Just calm down, Shaggy,” Bobby quipped back, quoting from his favorite new cartoon, “This isn’t going to take long. I just gotta find the stairs and run up to the top balcony. Five minutes tops. Just go back with the other guys and wait for me.”
Stevie gave him a long, doubtful look, but then slid back down and out of sight.
Alone once again, Bobby turned and eased out into the black hallway beyond the door. The floor creaked as he made his way toward the dimly lit door at the end of the hall. Once he stopped, as the sound of something scampering along the floor came from behind a closed door that he just passed.
“Mice,” he breathed, realizing that all sorts of small animals called this place home nowadays.
Pushing the door at the end of the hall open, he found himself behind some form of registration desk that looked out onto a bare, trash strewn lobby. Light filtered in from a half circle window above the boarded front doors. Dust motes danced in the air, and strips of stained old wallpaper hung off the walls like soiled rags. Abandonment echoed in the still atmosphere like a silent chorus.
The feature that caught Bobby’s attention was the set of stairs rising up into the wall on his right. He wasted little time in sliding over the desk and sneaking across the room to the bottom of the stairs. Situated in the center of the building, away from any windows, the stairwell led up into darkness. Bobby could see well enough to tell it led up about ten steps before reaching a landing and then turning on itself and rising farther to the second floor.
Swallowing hard, he took his first step up into the shadowed bowels of the derelict. Now that he began to ascend these steps, he realized the enormity of where he stood. This was real. Somewhere above him, at the top of this very stairwell, a madwoman had committed mass murder…including two boys about his age. And that horror represented the last act of a story involving untold years of cruelty and suffering.
Reaching the landing, he turned and made his way up to the second floor. The stairway emptied out into a smaller version of the foyer below. Two of the windows were without boards, making this room brighter than its predecessor. Hallways stretched into shadow in both directions. Bobby walked over to one of the windows and looked out onto the second floor balcony. The boards out there were grey with weathering, and a few in the floor were broken or missing. He hoped the fourth floor balcony withstood the years and weather better than this.
Returning to the stairwell, he prepared to resume his climb, only to find his path blocked. A gate stretched across the stairwell to the third floor. As he looked at it, he realized it must have been one of the old security gates, intended to keep the orphans downstairs. He wrinkled his nose during his inspection of the gate as a hint of stench reached his nostrils, wafting down from somewhere above. Some animal must have crawled in and died somewhere up there. It didn’t register much though, his attention focused on the problem before him. Unless he could negotiate this obstacle, he could go no further.
He considered giving up and returning to his friends outside, but then another idea occurred. The stairwell didn’t seem large enough to service an entire building of patients, and the staff needed to take care of them. It seemed logical that there must be another set of stairs in this building.
Crossing the second floor foyer, he started making his way down the dim hallway. As he crept along, he would peek into the doors on the right, since they showed light coming around the cracks. Those turned out to be ruined hospice rooms that looked out onto the front balcony. Most were empty, save debris, loose tiles, and the ancient steel frames of old beds. The fact that the rooms on the other side of the ruined hall remained dark, told him the hallway most likely went in a circle and joined the hallway across the foyer on the back side of the building. He soon confirmed this by following the hall around a corner.
A short way down, another stairwell beckoned. Smaller than the one in the lobby, this one also had a gate but the one to the stairs going up hung open. Bobby realized that an identical stairwell probably sat on the other end of the building. These must have been intended for staff, he reasoned. It never occurred to him that these were most likely the stairwells used by the children thirty-five years earlier.
The growing scent of decay returned as he felt his way up the pitch dark stairwell. His knuckles already white, he tightened his grip on the dowel rod and used it to probe ahead as he made his way to the third floor. A gate at the third floor barred him from taking this stairwell any higher, but Bobby figured that two other stairwells were available to try for the top. Pieces of roof tile crunched underfoot as he stepped out into the third floor hallway. Picking his way around a rusty old serving cart, he turned right and started making his way down the murky corridor. As he rounded the corner, he found himself forced to come to a halt. A part of the ceiling sagged down into the corridor about thirty feet ahead, blocking both light and progress. Reversing course, he decided to follow the hall in the other direction.
A quick left and he headed back down the hallway, past the stinking stairwell, and for the turn at the other end of the hallway. Another left revealed a brighter area ahead. Bobby now headed down the debris strewn corridor that ran along the back of the building, toward what appeared to be a rear lobby. He greeted the return of light with a sigh of relief as he made his way out of the dark tunnel and over to the large glass door that looked out onto the rear balcony.
Sunlight flowed in through the westward looking doors, yet somehow lost all its warmth as it filtered through the grimy glass. Outside, the bright greens and yellows of a Texas autumn beckoned, at stark contrast with the pale grays and soiled browns of the building’s interior. From the third floor, Bobby could see most of the west end of Hallisboro dozing under the blue afternoon sky…the single apparent motion being the flashing lights of a police cruiser in the distance, racing down Cedar Hill. Oddly, the sound of the siren seemed far more muted and faint than the distance warranted, as if it came from much further away than it looked through the windows.
“Where are you going, Mr. Policeman?” he muttered, straining to hear the sounds of the outside world better. A rhythmic creaking that originated from somewhere above made an annoying interference with his efforts. Becoming more aware of the sound, Bobby vaguely remembered it being noticeable when he entered the lobby. Turning his attention upwards, he determined it must be coming from the fourth floor, beyond the ceiling above him.
It was while the boy stood there, frowning at the ceiling, that the creaking ended with a heavy thud that sounded straight above him. Startled, Bobby stumbled backwards, dropped his dowel rod, and fell on his butt. He gaped at the thin curtains of dust drifting down from the ceiling.
“What the hell?” he gasped, knotting his fingers into the shreds of ruined carpet beneath him.
There came a heavy sliding sound from the spot on the ceiling, followed by two more heavy thumps. Fear knifed through Bobby’s gut, as his imagination put meaning to the sounds from above.
He pictured something hanging on the end of a creaking rope. Something that had fallen on the floor above. Something that landed with a heavy yielding thud, like a grain sack…only worse. Much worse.
And that something had started getting up.
Every nerve keened, as Bobby recognized a shuffling footstep from the upper floor. Somebody was moving around up there. And whoever it was, seemed to be getting their balance. His heart crowded up into his throat, as he kept his attention riveted to the boards above him. More stumbling steps knocked against the wood up there, the kind of sound that hard heels made against oak floorboards. The kind of h
eels found on women’s shoes.
The steps now moved with purpose.
Bobby crabbed backwards, grabbed his flag, and then thrashed his way to his feet. He needed to get out of here now. Right now.
Panting raggedly, he located the hallway he came from and sprinted back into the darkness. Crashing his way down the gloomy corridor, he kicked past fallen sheets of wallpaper that seemed determined to tangle his feet and bring him to his knees. He managed to keep himself erect, and reached the corner that turned into the murky tunnel to the stairwell.
The stairwell itself was an inky black rectangle in the right hand wall, about thirty feet down the passage. Keeping to the wall, Bobby staggered for the dim exit. His own tortured breathing and stumbling footsteps echoed around him in the tight confines. His throat hurt from the knot of the repressed scream. Reaching forward, he caught the edge of the door jamb and pulled himself around to face the stairwell.
“Do I hear little feet?” rattled a clotted voice just ahead of him in the blackness of the stairwell. His spine turned to water and his throat kinked, again throttling the scream that tried to burst out. Waves of stench emanated from the opening, causing him to gag and reel backwards.
Bobby fled in blind panic onward down the corridor, some small part of his mind gibbering at him that he was committing a terrible mistake. He crashed around the corner ahead and fled into the darkness…only to pull up short where the ceiling had collapsed and leaned down to block the hallway.
A dead end.
With a desperate whimper, he raced back to the corner and forced himself to peek around. The silhouette of a woman shambled down the hall—a silhouette that bent its neck at an impossible angle.
Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen Page 12
