Shelly didn’t hesitate; she immediately started upward.
“I say we observe first,” Robert offered. “We wait and watch. If we see the doctor—what was his name? Gainsfield?”
“Mansfield,” Shelly corrected him.
“If we see Dr. Mansfield, we can try to talk to him first. Remember what you guys said about Jacky and Amy? About how they were just confused? Maybe the quiddity here will be the same here. Maybe the doctor might just want to be released—to go on his way. We might even be able to ask him where his body is.”
Cal, huffing now into his mask, spoke next.
“You mean his body parts?”
“What?”
“He was dismembered, remember?”
Fuck.
Robert had forgotten about that. And all his talk of the doctor was deliberately avoiding mention of the patient that had done the dismembering.
What were they supposed to do with him? Have a nice little chitchat? Some tea, perhaps?
Robert shook his head, trying to clear the pervasive negativity that blanketed his thoughts.
“Shel, do you think we have to bury all of the body parts? Or just—”
“I’d be more worried about the patient, if I were you,” she said flatly.
“The patient?” Cal asked, his voice wavering.
Robert swallowed hard, and even his best efforts couldn’t shake the unnerving feeling that washed over him.
Shelly stopped suddenly and turned, looking past Robert to Cal, whose eyes were red and watery from all the dust.
“Yeah, you know? The one that did the dism—”
But another voice, this time neither Robert’s, Cal’s, or Shelly’s, filled the stairwell, and all three of them stopped cold.
“Where you guys going?”
It was a woman’s voice, and it was coming from somewhere below them.
Robert, eyes wide, turned to Shelly, but she offered no support. Her gaze was locked on a spot below them, trying to see who had spoken.
“Hello?” the voice asked again.
For some reason, this query snapped Cal out of his stupor and he actually answered.
“H—h—hello? Is someone there?”
Robert’s brow furrowed.
So much for just waiting and watching.
A woman’s pale, round face suddenly poked from around the lower level of the staircase.
“Hi,” she said, smiling widely. “You’re here to see the doctor, right?”
Robert felt himself nodding despite himself, and his hand instinctively went to the picture of Amy in his front pocket. It offered him comfort to know that she was here with him, even if it was only in the form of a passport photo.
“Well, Dr. Shaw is waiting for you. He’s down here in the Seventh Ward.”
Robert swallowed hard, and Shelly unexpectedly reached out and grabbed his arm. He nearly jumped, but this did nothing to lighten her grip.
Her fingers bit into his skin, sending pain shooting up and down his forearm.
Dr. Shaw? Who the fuck is Dr. Shaw?
The woman’s blonde head ducked out of view, and they listened as she receded down several stairs.
Robert immediately thought of the dust that blanketed the floor in the First Ward. Either this woman hadn’t been up there in a while—how long? Years, maybe?—or she had found another way in.
Or…
“Well? Are you coming? The doctor’s been waiting for you.”
Shelly’s fingers bit even deeper into Robert’s forearm, and a sudden sense of dread washed over him.
…or this woman that is luring us into the basement isn’t alive.
PART II - Surgical Intervention
Chapter 14
NINE YEARS AGO
The woman watched from the trees, her dark eyes peering out from between the spindly trunks. It was nearing midnight, and the moon cast the hospital in thin streams of bluish light.
There was only one car in the parking lot, a champagne-colored sedan with rust clinging to the wheel wells. She watched in silence, waiting. After five minutes, the door to the hospital squealed and opened. A squat man in khakis and a polo stepped out, the moonlight reflecting off his bald head. He held the door open for a few seconds, peering down the hallway almost longingly. Then he closed the door, which sealed with a metallic thump.
The man retrieved a padlock from his pocket, and flipped the metal bracket across the door and locked it in place. Even from her vantage point high above, the woman could see that the lock was hefty, solid. And yet even when he affixed a second, smaller lock further down, near the handle, a smile crept onto her face.
After testing to make sure that the door wouldn’t budge, the man reached up and scratched at his bald head. Hands jammed in his pockets, he eventually turned and walked toward his car. Although he opened the car door immediately, he hesitated before stepping inside, his gaze drifting upward.
The woman didn’t move, but for a split second she thought that their eyes met. But then the man looked away and got into his car.
She watched him drive away, the smile on her face growing from a grin to one of Cheshire proportions.
The man hadn’t seen her.
No one had.
It had been five years, and in that time, they had forgotten all about her. Her and him.
But they would soon remember.
The time for watching and waiting had come and gone. The time for acting had returned.
The woman pushed herself to her feet, brushing the leaves from her body, all the while keeping her eyes locked on Pinedale Hospital.
It’s time to wake the doctor, she thought as she headed back into the forest. It’s time to wake the doctor and get back to work.
It’s been far too long.
Chapter 15
Robert apprehensively followed the strange woman with shoulder-length blonde hair in the nurse scrubs, ready to turn around and bolt should she make any sudden movements. He could hear Cal’s heavy breathing directly behind him, and behind Cal, he thought he could hear Shelly, too.
Naturally, his first thought was that she was an apparition—one of the trapped quiddity. But having followed her for more than a minute now, he was no longer so sure. For one, her scrubs were blue…faded, granted, but definitely blue, whereas everything that James and Patty Harlop had worn was a washed-out gray. Even their skin had had a sickly pallor.
But Amy…Amy seemed so real, her shirt so pink.
Robert’s head began to throb, and he found himself receding into the dark place he had so desperately clawed out of only a few months prior. A place of confusion, where things didn’t make sense, but had distinct, and severe, consequences.
“Please,” the woman said over her shoulder. “Through here.”
The nurse, who had now reached the basement level, used a keycard to activate the magnetic reader to the right of a heavy metal door.
The resultant beep cut through the fog that encased Robert’s mind, and two things suddenly became clear: one, that he somehow needed get his hands on that card; and two, that there was a speck of blood on the otherwise gleaming white ID card.
When she yanked the door wide and held it open for them, Robert stopped on the third rung of the stairs. He tried his best to observe the woman, squinting, tilting his head, looking for something, anything, that would help him ascertain if she was a real person or a ghost.
The problem was, he had no foolproof method of determining if she was real.
Except one, but that was out of the question.
He tried angling the flashlight, trying to see through the plump woman, but there was just too much dust in the air and it blurred his vision.
Besides, both Ruth and Amy had seemed so solid.
He made a mental note to look for a solution to this problem on the Internet when they got back to the estate.
Maybe to ask LBlack or Sean about it.
The nurse pursed her lips together in a thin smile.
“Oh,
c’mon. He’s waiting for you.”
Shelly cleared her throat, and it was all Robert could do not to turn and face her—he wasn’t going to take his eyes off the mysterious nurse.
“You said—uh, you said a Doctor…Shaw?”
The woman nodded vigorously.
“Yeah, that’s right. Dr. Shaw. He’s been waiting.”
“You sure you don’t mean Dr. Mansfield?”
Something dark passed over her face, and for a brief second Robert thought he saw her eyes darken, threatening to become dark pits. But when he blinked they were back to normal.
“Oh, Dr. Mansfield is here somewhere, too. But he’s not in charge anymore. That’s Dr. Shaw. He’s the chief now.”
She leaned forward suddenly, and Robert recoiled, an action that only made the nurse’s smile grow.
“Want a tip? He only likes to be called Doctor,” she giggled. “Made the mistake of calling him Andrew once; won’t be doing that again, let me tell you.”
The nurse waved a hand over the threshold.
“C’mon, now. Go on in. Don’t want to get the doctor angry. Normally we have this whole patient check-in thing—” She lowered her voice. “A waste of time, if you ask me, but one of the other patients has been acting up, lately, and he’s been keeping Dr. Shaw busy for a while now. So, please…”
Patients? She thinks we’re patients?
Robert stole a quick look at Cal and then Shelly. The expressions on their faces matched his own: confused, suspicious, and of course, scared.
He shrugged and took the initiative.
They’d made it this far, and besides, although the woman was strange, she didn’t seem that dangerous.
“Okay,” he said softly. The final few stairs suddenly seemed incredibly steep, and he was reminded of his fall into the Harlop basement.
This time, however, he had a flashlight and made it to the landing without falling. His eyes darted to the keycard reader and he noted a small green light in the upper right-hand corner.
Is there power here? Or does it run on some sort of long-lasting batteries?
Something to consider, in case the flashlight donked.
Robert swallowed hard as he neared the woman, his heart starting to race. As a last-ditch effort to determine if she was real, he shined the light directly at her, and her pupils dilated.
The nurse shielded her face with her arm.
“Sorry,” he grumbled, lowering the beam.
She certainly seemed real enough. Still, before he was within arm’s length of her, Robert gestured with an open palm toward the doorway.
“After you,” he said with a weak grin.
“Oh, a gentleman, are you? Will ain’t that nice.”
She stepped over the threshold, and Robert waited for her to pass through before he grabbed the door. It was heavy, and he had to plant his feet to stop it from closing.
“And after you,” he grumbled, indicating for Cal and Shelly to follow. Cal took his sweet ass time, his forward momentum hampered by the fact that his right hand was tucked behind him. Although it snaked up under his ridiculous robe, Robert would have bet all hundred grand that his meaty hand was gripping the crowbar.
A lot of good that’ll do if she is a ghost.
Shelly went next, her eyes locking on Robert’s as she passed.
Robert couldn’t hold her gaze. It was an accusing look, a look that said, you got us into this mess. One that said, if it looks fucked, we’ll leave? Isn’t that what we agreed? What, this isn’t fucked enough?
With a deep breath, Robert stepped into the long hallway, which was indistinguishable from the First Ward up above.
He took two steps and the door closed behind him with a loud click.
Robert jumped. He whipped his head around, and the breath caught in his throat at the sight of the large red seven painted on the back of the door.
Then the nurse spoke again, and he abruptly turned forward.
She was walking backward now, her hands out at her sides as if in celebration.
“Welcome, my newest patients of the Seventh Ward!” she exclaimed with a hint of glee in her voice.
Chapter 16
NINE YEARS AGO
Dr. Andrew Shaw took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to focus. When he opened them again, the scalpel in his right hand had stopped shaking. It had been a long time since he had performed any sort of surgery, a long time since he had been back in his hospital.
“Nurse, wipe my brow, please,” he instructed. The nurse used gauze to soak up some of his perspiration.
“Thank you.”
Dr. Shaw turned his attention back to the man on the gurney.
It didn’t matter how long he had been away. This discovery was too important to be hampered by his trepidation.
The man was completely naked; only his genitals were covered with a blue cloth. He had an oxygen mask strapped on his face, obscuring his features, and a blood pressure monitor on his finger. Off to the left was the O2 machine and the digital tracing of his heartrate on screen. It was slow, even: 120/83.
Perfect.
“Okay, Justine, you remember the plan, right? The surgical plan we went over?”
The woman, a doughy creature who was as short as she was wide, nodded, the soft skin beneath her chin quivering madly.
“Yes.”
“Repeat it back to me.”
The woman’s eyes went wide, and she looked frightened.
“Oh, oh, okay. First you are going to make an incision just over the left, uh, left, uh shin—”
“The medial muscles, and then the tibia,” Dr. Shaw corrected her.
“Ah, yes, the medial muscles and tubia, and then you are going to—”
The man on the gurney stirred. His head shifted, just a little, no more than an inch or two, but it was enough for Dr. Shaw to notice.
“Okay, never mind that. I’m going to remove his leg and hand it to you, okay? After I get through the soft tissue, I need you to pass the bone saw. It’ll get messy then, but you need to stay calm. He should—” Dr. Shaw checked his watched quickly. It read half past three. “—he should be out for another two hours. Should be enough time. I’m going to pass you the leg, and you put it on ice immediately, okay? Then we are going to take it to the other room while he’s recovering. Then it’s time to get his brother, okay?”
The nurse nodded eagerly, and Dr. Shaw sighed.
“Justine, you can’t fuck this up.”
Justine stopped smiling.
“No, Doctor. I’ll remember.”
Dr. Shaw’s expression softened.
“Good. Now let’s get started.”
***
It took more than the two hours Dr. Shaw had planned.
The problem was the bone saw. It was old, and wasn’t nearly as sharp as he had hoped. Halfway through the man’s tibia, it snagged and stalled. When he tried to start it up again, it binded and he couldn’t get it loose.
The man on the gurney moaned into his mask, which fogged over.
“Shit,” Dr. Shaw swore. “Justine, we need to hurry! Grab the other saw.”
Justine, her face a mixture of fear and anxiety, just stared at him.
“Fuck! Justine, get the goddamn saw!”
Dr. Shaw tried to turn the bone saw back on again, but the blade was completely jammed in the bone and it refused to move. The motor started to smoke.
“Over there! The one with the wooden handle!” he shouted, jabbing a finger toward the hacksaw on the metal table with all the other tools.
Justine finally snapped to and rushed across the room, her wide hips bumping into the heartrate monitor, sending it rolling away. As if in response to the nudge, the man’s tracing suddenly increased in pitch.
“Hurry, Justine! He’s walking! Fucking move!”
Justine increased her waddling speed. She grabbed the saw and brought it over to Dr. Shaw, whose eyes remained locked on the man on the gurney. His cheeks were pinched, creasing forming by the o
uter corners of his eyes; the drugs were wearing off, but he couldn’t give him any more. They were a precious commodity, and he needed to save what little he had left for the man’s brother.
Dr. Shaw snatched the saw from Justine’s doughy hands and instructed her to get up next to him.
“I’m going to try and wedge this blade between the electrical saw and the bone, and when I say, give the bone saw a yank. Once it’s out, I’ll push this one in and then hack it off manually.”
Justine nodded again, the strange grin returning to her face.
“We have to hurry, though…his isn’t going to be pleasant, especially with him waking.”
Dr. Shaw, grimacing, checked the surgical ligatures on both sides of the man’s knee. They were still tight, which was good. One slip, and the man would bleed out, and they only had three units of fresh blood left. He glanced quickly at Justine, sizing her up as she stared at the man on the gurney. His gaze drifted to her fat arms that seemed to ooze out of her scrubs.
Five years in the woods, living off berries and sparse game meat—squirrels, rats, the occasional rabbit—and she hadn’t seemed to have lost a pound.
That’s good…Justine has a strong constitution. She’s also a universal donor O-; if push comes to shove, and I need blood…
Dr. Shaw shook his head and leaned over the gurney. He pressed the hacksaw up next to the other blade, wincing at the sound it made as it skipped across the exposed bone.
“Okay? You ready?” he asked, twisting the blade ever so slightly.
Justine nodded eagerly.
“On three: one…two…three!”
On three, Justine pulled. At first nothing happened; the blade was just buried too deep.
“Justine! Pull! Fucking pull and lift!”
Justine obliged, pulling with all of her substantial girth.
There was a terribly coarse tearing sound, and the blade finally slid out. Justine stumbled backward when it released, knocking the monitor over completely and falling on her ass. She cried out, but Dr. Shaw ignored her.
The Seventh Ward (The Haunted Book 2) Page 8
