Robert reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, and she whipped around, her eyes blazing into him.
He let his hand fall.
“Let’s just check out the scene; if it’s too much, we’ll back out.” He shook the letter. “We’ll burn this letter and figure out some other way to make money.” Robert indicated Cal with his chin. “Maybe Cal here can start stripping.”
Shelly smirked, and he knew that her resolve was faltering. Cal must have noticed too, as he piped up.
“Fuck, if we have to resort to me stripping, we’ll be drinking prison wine and not decades-old scotch, m’lady,” he informed them, rubbing his round belly.
Robert reached out again, but this time when his hand fell on Shelly’s shoulder, she lowered her gaze and didn’t brush him away.
“We need you, Shelly. Cal and I can’t do this alone. You know more about this stuff than both of us combined.”
Robert waited, and eventually Shelly looked up at him. He was suddenly struck by how pretty she was, especially when she was being vulnerable, as she was now.
She pressed her lips together.
“Fine,” she relented at last. “We go and check it out, but that’s it.”
Cal clapped his hands together in glee.
“Yippee! I’ll go get Slimer and warm up the station wagon. Ectoplasm away!”
***
Robert laughed. He couldn’t help it.
“What?” Cal snapped, his eyes narrowing.
“What? Seriously? What the hell are you wearing? You look like some sort of out-of-shape ninja.”
Shelly joined in to his laughter.
“Like a—like some sort of swollen blood sausage,” she added between laughs.
Cal looked down at his body, a frown on his face. While he was distracted, Robert stepped forward and flicked the black belt that hung from his waist.
“Where’d you get this, anyway? Is it a bathrobe or something?”
Cal shrugged and tightened the waist tie. He was sporting a black turtleneck, over top of which he wore a silky black bathrobe. He was also wearing a baseball cap pulled down low, and with his turtleneck pulled up high as it was, only his face was exposed. To top off the look, he was wearing a pair of cheap wool gloves.
“I dunno what it is…found it in a box in one of the back rooms. There are heaps of boxes that haven’t been touched in years. Might be some gems or jewels in there.”
Robert shook his head.
“Gems or jewels? Like a pirate’s bounty? What the hell are you talking about?”
Cal raised an eyebrow.
“You never know.”
“Fine, whatever, but why the fuck are you wearing that?” Shelly asked, hands on her hips. “I don’t think I want to be seen with you…besides, it’ll be best for you to be alone when you get your big break. You know, when you are featured on How To Catch A Predator. I can see the headline now: Rotund man in silky bathrobe seen handing out candies at the elementary school.”
“Rotund? Fuck off. I just thought…I thought…”
Robert considered saving his friend, but he was enjoying Cal being the one who was embarrassed for once and not the other way around.
“Yes?”
“You know, about not touching and all that. I thought that if I wore this, maybe they couldn’t get to my skin.”
Robert chuckled.
“What? We don’t know. Maybe they just have to touch your skin.”
Shelly made a face. The humor had suddenly left the room.
“Alright, whatever,” she added, adjusting the backpack on her shoulder as she turned toward the door.
Robert hurried after her.
“What’s in the bag, Shelly?”
“Tampons,” Cal said quickly, pulling up the rear.
“Fuck off.”
“Oh, sensitive, are we?”
Shelly ignored the comment.
“What is in the bag?” Robert asked again, genuinely curious.
She shrugged it off.
“Some stuff we might need.” It was clear that she wasn’t planning on expanding on this further, so Robert just let it go. Cal, on the other hand…
“Maxi pads?”
Shelly whipped around, and for a brief moment, Robert thought that she was going to reach out and hit him.
And he wouldn’t have blamed her.
Instead, she just smiled.
“Just take off the damn bathrobe, you perv.”
Robert grinned, Cal frowned, and together the trio left the Harlop Estate.
Chapter 8
FOURTEEN YEARS AGO
It wasn’t a suicide attempt.
It was something much worse.
“Put down the scalpel, Andrew,” Dr. Mansfield ordered calmly.
He barely recognized the man before him. Andrew Shaw’s eyes were small and red. His hair, usually shaggy, was now a complete mess. Even his voice seemed different somehow.
“Call me Doctor Shaw, or I’ll slit her throat.”
Dr. Mansfield swallowed hard as he watched the man move the blade closer to Mrs. Dupuis’s exposed neck. Andrew was crouched behind her as she lay on the gurney, completely nude. He looked out from over her right shoulder, one hand gripping the blade that was just now touching the leathery skin beneath her chin, while his other palm was pressed firmly against her forehead, pinning it to the gurney.
“Fine, fine, but please, just put the scalpel down. You don’t want to do this.”
“He ain’t gonna do it,” Mrs. Dupuis spat. “He’s a fucking pussy—he don’t have the balls to kill me.”
Mrs. Dupuis had become the irate junkie, and Dr. Mansfield did his best to ignore her. Still, he knew he only had a little time before she was going to seize. Phantom personality or not, this version of Mrs. Dupuis still needed her drugs. And if she didn’t get them, she was prone to quickly descend into violent convulsions.
And with that blade…
“Andrew—”
“Doctor!” the man suddenly screamed. “Call me Doctor!”
Dr. Mansfield held his hands up.
“Sorry, sorry. Doctor—Dr. Shaw—please let her go. We can talk about this.”
Something flickered across Andrew’s face, a representation of the man that Dr. Mansfield had first met upon entering the ward, the one that he had trusted enough to interview patients with him.
The man that he had taken pity on, most likely because of his medical background.
And also because he would be lying if he didn’t see a lot of himself in Andrew Shaw.
Stupid…how could you possibly be so stupid?
“We can talk about it?” Andrew said with a sneer, the new version of himself, the one that Dr. Mansfield to this point had only read about, regaining control. He leaned out from behind the gurney and released Mrs. Dupuis’s forehead.
“See? Told you this pussy can’t do it.”
Both men ignored the naked woman splayed on the gurney, and Andrew grabbed the neck of his t-shirt and yanked it down. “You want to talk about this?”
At first, Dr. Mansfield didn’t know what Andrew was referring to, but when he leaned out even further, he caught sight of a thick pink scar that ran from the hollow of his throat before disappearing beneath his shirt.
His thoughts immediately turned to the comment that Andrew had made about Giselle’s transplant and the words scrawled on every page of the notebook like some sort of demented mantra.
There’s someone inside me…there’s someone inside me…there’s someone inside me…
“I was only twelve when they did this to me,” he said, his voice dry and hoarse. “When they put someone else in here.”
He retracted the blade from Mrs. Dupuis’s neck for a moment to poke at the scar.
The woman immediately cackled.
“Told you! Told you! Told you!”
“But it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I realized they didn’t just put someone else in here”—he moved the scalpel to his hairline
and used it to gently stroke his temple—“but that they put someone in here, too.” Andrew lowered his voice until it was a mere whisper. “There’s someone inside me…”
Dr. Mansfield took a small step forward, and Andrew immediately put the blade back to Mrs. Dupuis’s throat. Her eyes suddenly went wide and immediately filled with tears.
“Please, please, Daddy, what’s he doing to me? I don’t want him to do this to me,” she said between sobs.
The scared seven-year-old now. Dr. Mansfield shook his head, struggling to keep his focus despite the insanity that billowed about the room.
“Dr. Shaw, I know that you feel you have been wronged somehow, that your parents should have asked you if you wanted the transplant, but doing this is not going to make you any better. You know this,” he said, trying desperately to appeal to the other Andrew Shaw. “You know this; and besides, you can’t hurt anyone. You’re a doctor, after all.”
A smile started to cross Andrew’s face, and Dr. Mansfield felt his heart sink. In that lecherous grin, he knew that his approach had failed. He immediately broke for the gurney, but despite his reaction, he was too slow.
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Dr. Mansfield. I’m not a real doctor.”
“Please, Daddy—”
Mrs. Dupuis’s words regressed into a gurgle as Andrew drove the scalpel into the woman’s throat all the way to the handle. Blood immediately sprayed from the wound, nearly reaching Dr. Mansfield, who was still four feet away.
“No!” he screamed, lunging for the gurney.
The demented man dragged the blade across her neck, making a thin red gash in her copper-colored flesh. The blood stopped spurting, and instead just flowed in thick rivulets, soaking the front of the old woman’s neck, her sagging breasts. The sheet beneath her immediately turned a deep crimson.
Dr. Mansfield ran to her, his physician instincts taking over, any concept of danger to himself vanishing. Andrew stepped back as he neared, and Dr. Mansfield jammed his palms on Mrs. Dupuis’s neck, trying to stem the blood that ebbed out of her. She was begging to thrash, which only served to send more blood flying. It bubbled from her mouth now, and her eyes rolled back.
“Help!” Dr. Mansfield shouted, wondering why the orderlies and security were taking so long with the light and alarm flashing as they were. “Help me! I need—”
But then he felt something cold press up against his collarbone and he immediately stopped speaking.
“You don’t believe me now, Dr. Mansfield—you don’t believe there there’s someone inside me. But you will. By the time I’m done with you, I swear you will. Together, we are going to make history.”
Chapter 9
“Pinedale Hospital’s doors officially closed on February 25th, 2006, but the hospital had been in steady decline ever since the incident that occurred almost exactly five years prior.”
Shelly paused and licked her lips.
“C’mon, why you stopping?” Cal asked.
Robert kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. He was only half listening to what Shelly was saying, despite a keen understanding that what she was reading was very important; that Pinedale Hospital was important, as was the Seventh Ward.
But he couldn’t stop his mind from returning to Sean and the question he was going to ask him when this was all over.
And the Marrow; the Marrow was always on his mind.
“I’ll wait for Captain Ghostbuster over here, make sure he wakes up from his wet dream first before I continue.”
Should I ask him about what the lightning in the sky meant? Or what the water was? The sand? If I’ll ever see Amy again? If I can go back, maybe?
The last thought made him shudder, but he wasn’t sure if it was a manifestation of excitement or discomfort.
Or maybe it was a bit of both.
A hand suddenly smacked the back of his head.
“What the fuck, Cal?”
Robert shot the man a look in the rearview, but Cal just stared back, shaking his head in disgust. Although their friendship had been strained from living together, as anyone’s would, there was something different about him ever since they had purged the ghosts from Harlop Estate. He was, in a word, distant. Robert also thought he detected a hint of envy disguised in his biting satire.
There was no question that there was something building between Shelly and himself, and Robert knew that it was only natural that Cal, who had brought her into their fold, would be a little jealous.
Robert glanced over at Shelly, who was staring back at him. Her green eyes were wide, outlined by thick mascara that went beyond the lids and into a point—cat’s eyes. This mascara was the only makeup she wore—that she ever wore—and yet her lips were always so red and juicy and—
“We’re waiting on you, cowboy,” Shelly said softly. As if knowing what he was thinking, her tongue snaked out and wet her lower lip. “What you thinking about, anyway? Still thinking about Wendy—”
“No, no,” he interrupted, “nothing like that.”
You wouldn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, just tired, is all. Please, keep reading. I’m listening.”
Cal grumbled something, but Robert didn’t make out the words. A quick glance revealed that the man had crossed his arms over his chest and was now staring out the window, sulking like a petulant child.
Yeah, definitely envious. Not so disguised anymore, however.
Shelly gave him a look as if she didn’t believe him, but continued anyway.
“Okay, so this fucking hospital? Pinedale? Shut down about a decade ago. But it was already on its way out because of an incident—”
“Yeah, we heard this shit,” Cal said from the backseat, his eyes still trained out the window. “Get to the good part.”
Shelly scrolled furiously on her cellphone.
“Alright, here we go… On February 17th, 2001, nearly exactly five years to the day that Pinedale officially closed its doors, a patient from the Seventh Ward—the psychiatric ward—kidnapped the psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. George Mansfield. The exact details of what happened on that fateful day were never released due to patient confidentiality rules, but over the years more and more information has leaked. What we do know was that there was an altercation of sorts involving a Seventh Ward nurse and two patients. When the dust cleared, one patient was dead and Dr. Mansfield was kidnapped by the other patient. The nurse also went missing, although it’s still unclear if she was an accomplice or a victim. Believed to have escaped into the woods behind Pinedale, the police searched for days on end, but they came up empty. There was just no sign of the missing nurse, patient, or Dr. Mansfield. During the investigation, which is still open to this day, the Seventh Ward was temporarily closed, but it never reopened.
“Two years ticked by without any progress, then three. Rumors started rumbling in Pinedale’s other wards, with some patients claiming that they could hear Dr. Mansfield barking orders late at night when no one was around. It was during this time that the first body part was discovered: an amputated leg—from the knee down—was found in the bathroom in the Second Ward, jammed into a toilet. The next week, an arm was found in the sink of the women’s bathroom in the Fourth Ward. DNA confirmed that both of these belonged to Dr. George Mansfield. As news of the man’s dismemberment spread, people simply stopped coming to Pinedale, and soon the entire hospital was nearly as empty as the Seventh Ward. Which is why it came as no surprise that this past February, the Board of Directors decided that it was in the best interest of both their shareholders and the community at large if Pinedale closed their doors for good. All patients were redirected to North Halichuck Hospital, a much newer facility, which is less than thirty miles north of where Pinedale is located. There are no current plans for the facility after the final patients are moved to NHH at this time. Although Dr. George Mansfield’s entire body was never found, based on the dismembered limbs, his family and the authorities have assumed him dead. The nurse and the patient are still officia
lly considered missing.”
A hush fell over the car as Shelly finished reading the final paragraph.
Then Cal said the word that was repeating in all three of their heads.
“Dismembered?”
Shelly shrugged, trying to remain tough, but even out of the corner of his eye, Robert could tell that she too was shaken.
“What it says… lemme…” she began playing with the phone again. “Lemme see what else I can dig up.”
In the intervening minute, Robert felt Cal’s hand up at his neck again, only now it was a gentle poke to get his attention and not a slap. Evidently, his sulking and staring out the window was over—for now.
Hearing about a man being dismembered would snap anyone out of a funk, he supposed.
“Did…what’s his name, Steve? Did Steve tell you anything else about the Seventh Ward?” His words dripped with fear and apprehension.
Robert shook his head.
“It’s Sean, and no. He didn’t say anything about it, actually. I only know what you know—what was in the letter,” he lied. Robert hadn’t told them about the one question deal, but that wasn’t for them anyway.
His thoughts drifted briefly to his last moments with Amy, when she had begged to hug him but he wouldn’t let her. He had been frightened then, frightened at the idea of being pulled to the Marrow and not coming back, but now…just maybe, if the opportunity were to present itself again—
“Hey, Robbo, you spacing out again? What the fuck, man?”
“Sorry.”
“I asked where you met Sean.”
Robert shrugged.
“Look, I told you the story already. He came to my door with the letter from Aunt Ruth. Then I saw him again on my walk, smoking. That’s it, man, really. I don’t know anything about him. Maybe”—he hooked a chin at Shelly, who was still staring at her phone—“maybe after Shelly’s done, she might be able to Google him. His name is Sean Sommers.”
Shelly looked up at the mention of her name, and Robert was momentarily taken aback by how pale she had suddenly become. Even her lips had gone a shade of muted pink.
The Seventh Ward (The Haunted Book 2) Page 5
