“What?”
“It’s your last chance.”
“For what?”
“To take off that ridiculous outfit.”
Shelly laughed.
Robert was in the process of turning to glimpse the expression on his friend’s face when movement from inside the hospital caught his eye.
“Fuck off, Ro—”
“Wait!” Robert gasped. “There’s something in here!”
Chapter 12
FOURTEEN YEARS AGO
Dr. Mansfield’s slowly started to regain consciousness. His head hurt, his eyes hurt, and his wrists hurt.
His neck was chafed and raw.
At first, he had no recollection of where he was.
Did I go out after work? Have a few too many drinks with one of the pretty nurses?
An image of Betsy, the newest nurse intern, young blonde, perfect breasts, in her bright blue scrubs flashed in his mind. But as he blinked several more times, he realized that the face he was seeing wasn’t a memory, but that it was actually real. Slowly, however, Betsy’s smooth, caramel-colored skin started to become paler, and then it started to widen.
“No,” he murmured as Justine leaned in even closer.
He tried to move away from her, but his arms and legs were locked in place and he couldn’t budge. Snippets of what had happened, of finding Andrew Shaw’s notepad, of Mrs. Dupuis bleeding out on her bed, and the trek up the hill behind Pinedale with the scalpel pressed to his throat came flooding back.
Tears welled in his eyes.
“Where—where am I?” he asked, his throat dry, his voice hoarse.
While his arms and legs were bound to some sort of wooden table, spread out at his sides, he was free to lift and move his neck around. It appeared as if he was in some sort of cabin with dull brown walls and a single window off to his right.
It was completely black outside.
Nighttime…how long was I out? And where the hell are the police?
“He’s waking,” Justine said softly, but Dr. Mansfield ignored her. Instead, he whipped his head around again, trying to take in as much of his surroundings as possible before Andrew did anything else to him.
The smell of vegetation—moss, maybe, or wet leaves—filled his nose.
Yes, a cabin in the woods…I must be in some sort of cabin or hunting lodge.
He couldn’t locate a sink or toilet in the cramped, eight-by-ten-foot space, only a bucket and some sort of repurposed ceramic basin.
Short-term stays…fishing cabin, maybe?
“Dr. Shaw?” Justine said, drawing his gaze back.
The nurse was staring directly ahead, over Dr. Mansfield’s head. Tilting his throat toward the ceiling, he could just barely make out the outline of a figure hovering over him. There was a lamp or light of some sort—no sink, no electricity, most likely—behind the figure, basking his features in shadows. But when the light glinted off a scalpel blade, Dr. Mansfield, if he had any doubts before, knew exactly who it was.
“Yes,” Andrew Shaw replied softly, “I can see that.”
The man moved what Dr. Mansfield now saw to be a lamp off to one side, bathing the left side of his face in a strange, orange-yellow glow.
“Welcome back, George.”
Dr. Mansfield swallowed hard.
“What—what are you going to do to me?” he asked, a tremor in his voice. His head hurt, and speaking only made the pain worse.
But he had to convince Andrew to let him go. Worst-case scenario, he had to stall. Stall long enough for the police to rescue him.
Andrew chewed his lip as he contemplated an answer, during which Dr. Mansfield listened for the sound of sirens, or better still, the sound of people outside the cabin. He wasn’t local to Corgin where Pinedale was located—he lived closer to the much larger North Halichuck—but as an avid walker, he spent many a lunch hour out behind the hospital, wandering through the very woods that he assumed he was in now.
There had been many occasions in which he had had to use his GPS watch to find his way back. The original plan, as the rumor went, was to develop the area behind the hospital, build up Corgin into a bustling metropolis. To date, however, this had become something of a pipe dream. The builders claimed that it was just too expensive, that cutting down the trees and flattening the rock outcroppings would stretch them too thin. Dr. Mansfield suspected that the very verbal outcry from environmentalists was the main reason that nothing ever got moving. On other days, this didn’t bother him. If anything, it made his daily walks more enjoyable. In this moment, however, lying nude, his wrists and ankles bound by what looked like extension cords, he wished that they had fucking clearcut the damn thing.
Turned it into a goddamn parking lot.
“I’m going to prove to you, Dr. Mansfield, that there is someone inside me.”
The man stared at Dr. Mansfield expectantly.
He wouldn’t give Andrew the satisfaction he so richly demanded.
“Andr—” He caught himself. “—Dr. Shaw, what you are saying—that you have a disorder, someone else trapped in your head because of a transplant you received when you were young—it’s just baseless. It’s not…not true. It can’t be true. Please, you need to let me go. I can help you, Dr. Shaw. But I can’t—” He strained against his wrist restraints. “—I can’t help you here. Not like this. Please, you need to let me go.”
Dr. Shaw hesitated, his face beginning to go slack. For a moment, Dr. Mansfield was struck with the notion that the other version of Andrew, the one that he had brought with him on patient interviews, was about to return.
But then Andrew’s eyes went dark again.
“How long have you been working in the Seventh Ward, Dr. Mansfield?”
“Sixteen years.”
He didn’t like the question; something told him that it was all leading up to a conclusion, one that he wanted no part of.
Fucking cops—where are you?
“And how many people have you helped? How many have you cured?”
Dr. Mansfield shrugged as best he could, given his position on the table.
“Hundreds.”
Andrew’s lips pressed together tightly, and he shook his head. The scalpel came into view again, only this time it wasn’t held up like a spear, but pointed directly at his chest.
“Wrong answer,” he said flatly. Then he turned to Justine. “Get undressed,” he ordered.
Justine’s eyes went wide, and for a second Dr. Mansfield thought that Andrew had pushed her too far, that whatever he was planning was just too out there for her. But to his horror, the nurse didn’t hesitate; she slipped the scrubs down over her shoulders and allowed them to pool on the floor.
Her massive white breasts sagged nearly to her navel, the nipples as big and round as apples.
Dr. Mansfield looked away, tears spilling down his cheeks now.
“You are going to actually be part of something…of something real special, Dr. Mansfield.”
The scalpel lowered and Dr. Mansfield cried out as he struggled against his restraints.
“Justine, don’t let him do this! Please! This is crazy! Get him—”
“You are finally going to help cure people, Dr. Mansfield,” Dr. Andrew Shaw whispered as he lowered the scalpel to the doctor’s bare chest. “There is someone inside me, and soon there will be someone inside you.”
He plunged the scalpel into his skin and Dr. Mansfield started to scream.
***
“Wha—what did you do to me?” Dr. Mansfield stuttered. His words sounded strange to him—warbling and tainted, with an odd inflection.
He attempted to look around, but one of his eyes was dark, and the vision in his other one was clouded.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Dr. Shaw! What the hell did you do to me?”
A groan from his left suddenly drew his attention. His head instinctively whipped that way, but it was his bad eye and he couldn’t see much. With his right eye, he could make out that he was still in
the cabin, and that it was still dark out, but not much more than that.
A bout of dizziness suddenly struck him, and he nearly panicked as he teetered on the verge of passing out. He closed his eyes and tried to take a few deep breaths to avoid succumbing to the panic that welled inside him. But halfway through his first breath, he felt an unnatural clicking sensation in his chest, followed by what felt like fluid seeping into his body cavity.
What the fuck?
“He’s filling with blood,” he heard someone say. It was Dr. Shaw’s voice, or he thought it was, but something was wrong with his ears as well. Underlying the voice, he could hear what sounded like rushing water or coursing blood.
A thump in his chest, and his heart started to flutter.
I’m dying.
“Justine! Get the coagulant over here! We’re losing him!”
Dr. Mansfield’s good eye fluttered, and he turned to face the general direction of the voice. It was then that he saw the thick, oblong object lying near the ceramic basin. It was fizzing slightly, the surface covered in a layer of tiny bubbles, and he knew exactly what it was.
It was his lung.
Hands were suddenly on his chest, a dull pressure that felt strangely comforting. His vision continued to flicker, his mind wavering. He thought about Betsy and some of the other nurses that he had brought through the Seventh Ward in his time.
Peaceful, serene thoughts; good thoughts.
He didn’t think about Mrs. Dupuis or Dr. Shaw, even when the man started shouting at Justine, screaming that his heart was failing, that he was seizing.
A small smile crept onto Dr. Mansfield’s face as he felt what was left of his vision fading to black, and time seemed to slow.
“We’ve lost him,” he heard Dr. Shaw mutter, his voice filled with dismay.
There was a long pause, and when Justine spoke next, it sounded like she was speaking underwater, and he could barely make out the words.
“What do we do with him now?”
A contemptuous sigh.
“We still have lots of him left…and someone else will come around. Dr. Mansfield will still be part of this discovery. Smile, Justine, our work is not done yet. Not by a long shot.”
Chapter 13
“You sure?” Shelly whispered. She had crept up behind him and was now pressed against his back, trying to get a better view of the inside of the hospital.
“I’m—I dunno,” Robert replied. He was pretty sure that he had seen some movement down the end of the hallway, but when he had looked again, he only saw shadows.
For nearly a minute, he resigned himself to just slowly swinging the cellphone flashlight back and forth trying to identify anything that might have moved.
“Hold on a sec,” Shelly said, peeling herself off of Robert. She squatted and removed her backpack before reaching inside. Then she pulled out two massive metal flashlights.
“Blowtorch and flashlights? You’re just full of surprises, ain’t ya?” Cal said. Shelly ignored him and handed one to Robert and reserved one for herself. “Oh, yeah, figures. I’ll just light the way with my fucking crowbar.”
Shelly hushed him, and Robert quickly handed Cal back his cellphone. Then he turned his attention to the broken window, aiming the flashlight inside before clicking it on.
“Fuck,” he swore, immediately recoiling and shielding his eyes. “Where the hell did you get these from?”
Unlike the cellphone, the flashlight was incredibly powerful, seeming to fill the entire hospital with artificial light.
“Army surplus,” Shelly replied, her voiced tinged with pride.
Squinting hard while his eyes adjusted, Robert turned back to the hospital. The window was near the center of a long hallway, the opposite side of which was punctuated by several plain doors placed at regular intervals; patient rooms, he assumed. The entire place was covered in dust—the floor, the walls, the small desk off to Robert’s right.
If he had seen something, it must have either been flying or gliding over the floor, as none of the thick layer of dust seemed to be disturbed.
He swallowed hard.
A thought of something gliding over the floor might have previously been met with a chuckle, but the idea of someone—Jacky Harlop—gliding across a floor—mud, her golden hair perfect, the rain seeming to fall around her—no longer seemed humorous.
At both ends of the hallway were identical, solid-looking doors.
Robert angled the flashlight upward slightly, and picked up red lettering on a gray sign that hung from the ceiling.
First Ward, it read, then beneath that, Outpatient Clinics.
He turned back to the others.
“Can’t see anything…doesn’t seem that anyone has been in there for years. Everything is covered in dust.”
Cal looked around, eyeing the thick vegetation on the side of the hill, then brought his gaze back to the broken window.
“No tracks of any kind? Animals? Birds even?”
Robert shook his head.
“Well, then,” Shelly interjected, “what are we waiting for? Let’s go inside.”
Despite her words, she didn’t move.
“So you go from not wanting to even come here to being eager to go inside?” Cal asked.
“For a hundred fucking grand, I’ll at least take a look in an abandoned hospital, thank you very much,” she snapped back. “Besides, I had to spend two hours in the car with you smelly fucks—need some fresh air.”
Still, despite their bickering, neither made a move toward the window. Eventually, Robert took the lead, which was only fitting, given it was he who had received the letter from Sean.
And he was also the one who was desperate to have his questions answered.
“Let’s do this, then,” he said, trying but failing to instill his voice with confidence.
Robert cautiously swung one leg over the windowsill, and then the other.
The fall was higher than he had expected, and he landed with an oomph and his knees locked uncomfortably. A cloud of dust swirled up to greet him, and he coughed while ineffectively tried to swat it away.
“It’s clear,” he said, turning back to the window. He reached up to help Shelly through the opening, but she shooed him away.
Her landing was more graceful than his, but she still stirred up nearly as much dust as he had. They both started to cough.
“You got any gas masks in there?” Robert asked, blinking rapidly, trying to clear his eyes.
“Yep,” Shelly replied, and at first Robert thought that she was joking. But when she dug out three white painter’s masks, he scoffed.
“For real? Jesus, what else do you have in there?”
“Tampons,” she said with a sly grin, before bringing the mask up to her nose and mouth. Robert was also smiling when he put his mask on.
Shelly was right, of course; none of this was a joke or to be taken lightly. But for some reason, Robert suddenly felt alive for the first time since Amy had died. He was no longer attached to his computer, and with the added element of danger…it all made his blood pump in a way that it hadn’t in months.
And it felt damn good.
Cal came through the window next, and in typical Cal style, he did so loudly. A grunt, a couple of curse words, and he was finally inside. He brushed the dust off his shirt, then eyed the mask that Shelly held out to him.
“Really?”
Shelly nodded, and Cal slipped his mask on.
For a moment, they all stood there in the center of the hallway, Shelly and Robert splaying their flashlights in either direction, Cal with his hands on his hips looking like a unionized ninja taking his requisite break. For all of their pep talks in the car, and Shelly’s warnings, they hadn’t actually come up with much of a plan.
Back in the Harlop Estate, they had bound the Harlop family to items that they had found about the house, based on what they knew of them. But here? In Pinedale Hospital? They had no idea who they were going to encounter, let alone what t
hese people held dear. Robert assumed that there was a doctor here, one that had been murdered, dismembered even, but it was a hospital…who knew how many dead they might encounter.
“So?” he asked tentatively, trying to stem his runaway thoughts. His voice was muffled by the mask. “Where to now?”
Shelly shrugged.
“The letter said the Seventh Ward, right?”
Robert nodded, and Shelly turned the flashlight up to the sign that he had seen earlier.
First Ward: Outpatient Clinics.
“I guess that means we go up, then, doesn’t it?”
They went left down the hallway, only because there was an image of a staircase above the door at the end. As they walked, slowly, trying their best not to stir up any more dust, Robert began to ruminate over how foolish they were actually being. Cal, evidently, was thinking the same thing, as he asked the question that was on Robert’s tongue.
“So what do we do when we find them? I mean, we have to bind them, right? Rebury them, like the Harlops?”
Shelly, who was leading the way, stopped so suddenly that Robert nearly crashed into her back. She didn’t turn when she spoke next.
“You ask this now?”
Cal shrugged.
“Well…yeah. I mean, what the fuck are we going to do?”
Shelly made a noise that Robert thought might have been a sigh, but it was difficult to tell beneath her mask. Then she started moving again. They reached the door and she slammed both hands against the bar, filling the entire ward with an echoing clang.
“Jesus, Shel,” Robert said.
This time she turned.
“What, you think we are going to wake the dead? Sorry to break it to you, Robert, but they’re already awake.”
With that, she stepped into the stairwell, and both Robert and Cal followed.
Like the outpatient ward, the stairway was equally dusty and untouched.
Robert shone his flashlight upward to the winding metal staircase above. He could see the door to the second ward, and the third, distinguishable only by the large numbers painted in red on their matte gray surface.
The Seventh Ward (The Haunted Book 2) Page 7
