“Okay,” she said softly. Then she slipped the bag off her shoulder and held it out to him.
For a moment, Robert thought this meant that she was going to flee and leave them here, and his heart sunk. But then she spoke again, and he took a deep breath.
Shelly wasn’t going anywhere.
“You’re gonna need this more than I do. Don’t worry about Justine, we’ll put that bitch in her place.”
And then she reached out for him almost desperately, and Robert nearly lunged at her. He breathed her scent in deeply and then pulled back.
Staring into those green eyes, Robert was nearly overcome with a desire to kiss her. To press his lips to her bright red ones.
But the moment passed and they separated. Robert turned back to Dr. Mansfield.
“You said something about a notebook, Doc?”
The man nodded.
“Alright, let’s grab that first…we’re probably going to need it.”
Chapter 34
Cal found a flashlight on a small table near the room that they had been confined in. It was a serendipitous finding, as he had sent the table spinning loudly when he had bumped into it in the dark. He also found his crowbar, which he promptly picked up and slid into the hidden pocket in the back of his pants. Only then did he ditch the black robe; not only were Shelly and Robbo right—it looked bloody ridiculous—but it was more restrictive than it appeared.
Even though they were now armed with one flashlight—having since given the other to Robert—they were hesitant to use it, for fear that Dr. Shaw or George might be near.
As it turned out, Justine wasn’t too hard to find even in the dark. The problem was, neither was George.
“You hear that?” Cal asked quietly as they had made their way past the door that they had blown open and down a second hallway. This one was darker than the one that they had just come from, and narrower as well. There were also fewer rooms, irregularly spaced. They only needed to take a few steps before they knew where to focus their attention. Light splayed out through the rectangular window of the third of five doors.
Shelly nodded.
“I hear it,” she whispered.
The sound of heavy, labored breathing, like someone having a hard time catching their breath after sprinting, infiltrated the otherwise silent hospital ward.
Crouching low to avoid being seen through the windows, they crept down the hallway with Cal taking the lead. He slipped the crowbar out from behind his back and gripped it with one hand, while Shelly followed closely, her hand against his back to remain in contact, and the other gripping the flashlight, ready to turn it on at a moment’s notice.
As they neared the third door, the sounds of breathing got progressively louder.
Cal scurried beneath the window after indicating that Shelly should remain on the other side of the door. Then, with both of their backs pressed against the wall, he turned to face his friend.
The light coming from the window was weak, but being so close to it meant he was able to make out her face.
He had seen the exchange between Robert and Shelly when they had hugged, and it had hurt him deeply. He was the one that had brought Shelly in, and goddamn if he didn’t long for that piece of ass. And besides, he was the one that spent nearly every day with her when Robert was locked upstairs in his room.
And yet when she looked at him now, she only looked scared. When she looked at Robert, however…
Shelly made a face, as if to say, what the hell do we do now?
Cal shrugged, and he regained his focus.
The breathing returned, and he was hard-pressed to believe that it was anyone but George, which was supposed to be Robert’s problem. But Robbo had gone the other way with Dr. Mansfield—if Dr. Shaw and George were here, in the room just a foot or two away, there was only one thing that they could do: run. But just crouching there, backs against the wall, was serving them no good. And they had a flashlight, which might be used to blind them if they absolutely had to.
And the crowbar, they had that, too. Only the last time Cal had used it against George, it hadn’t ended exactly the way he’d wanted. Maybe if they had the blowtorch…
Cal shook his head. They didn’t have that anymore—Shelly had given her backpack to Robert.
He sighed deeply, then closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he pointed at the window, the universal sign for I’ll take a look.
Shelly grimaced, clearly uncomfortable with the idea, and he watched as her two-handed grip on the flashlight tightened.
They had little other choice.
Steeling his nerves, Cal took three deep breaths, then slid up to a standing position, his thighs thanking him for the reprieve from squatting.
My body ain’t made for shoveling. Or squatting. Or running, which I’m probably going to have to do in just a…
Before losing his nerve, he slowly turned his head and peeked into the room.
All of the blood immediately drained from his limbs, and it was all he could to hold on to the crowbar.
The scene inside the cell was incredibly bizarre…and horrific. Cal’s eyes first went to the gurney, upon which the monster known as George lay. He was naked, his horrible stitched body, an amalgamation of others, on display. His eyes were closed, his head resting on one side. All of his other wounds, including the horrible, desiccated tear in his cheek, looked old, in some stage of rot or decay. Everything except for his right leg, that is. There was a hunk of flesh on his calf that looked fresher than the rest; it looked less gray, less dead. And there was blood-soaked gauze and towels underneath the foot.
I guess that’s what all that howling was about.
He turned his attention to the other person in the room next, and relief washed over him when he realized that it was Justine.
Only that didn’t last long—it was a transient, fleeting feeling. The nurse was sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, her back to him. She was in the process of getting dressed, of slipping her pale blue scrubs over her pale body. Cal retched as he caught sight of the state of her bare back.
Like George, her skin was a mess, a patchwork of stitches and scars that would have made a relief map of Utah look like a skating rink. Only this was different; George was a monster, a hideous freak that was long dead, while Justine…well, she was alive, wasn’t she? Robert and Dr. Mansfield had seemed so certain of this.
There were pockmarks, deep groves in her back, some of which hadn’t even healed over yet. Beneath the soft flesh of her right shoulder blade was a baseball-sized wound that was glistening that with every breath seemed to pucker ever so slightly.
Cal retched again, a visceral reaction that drew his gaze from the window. Blinking rapidly, he looked backed up again, avoiding eye contact with Shelly. In the process, however, the hand holding the crowbar dropped just a fraction of an inch, and it tapped against the door. It was the subtlest of sounds, a tiny ‘ting’ noise, that was barely audible. But the instant it happened, Justine’s blonde head whipped around.
Cal should have dropped to the floor; if he had dropped, maybe Justine would have gone back to whatever horrible thing she’d been doing, passing the sound off as a rat or just the floor creaking.
Maybe she would have stayed in the room.
But when Cal caught sight of the woman’s chest, he froze again.
Justine’s breasts were gone, replaced by horrible, taut, leathery flesh.
Clearly, she had been part of Dr. Shaw’s experiments as well.
And yet she had survived.
The woman’s eyes bored into him, and this snapped Cal out of his revulsion stupor and he dropped.
But it was too late.
Justine had seen him, and she was coming to the door.
Chapter 35
“That’s it, right there,” Dr. Mansfield said, indicating the top drawer of a desk near the back of a small office. It was ironic that the office was smaller than even the cell he was trapped in previously—for
all of the rumors about this place, it really did appear to be somewhere where the patients came first. The office was Dr. Mansfield’s, but the placard with his name on it had been scrawled over in what Robert knew could only be blood and now read: SHAW.
“There?” Robert asked, feeling uneasy for some reason. He hadn’t wanted to separate from his friends, but there was no way that he was going to send them to deal with George and Dr. Shaw. There was no way; after all, they were only here because of him.
Dr. Mansfield nodded, and Robert quickly walked over to it, careful to keep the flashlight beam low.
“Did you put it in here? Or did he?” he asked as he opened the drawer. It was full of random pieces of paper, which Robert shoved aside. He was looking for a blue notepad, the old-fashioned spiral kind.
“He did. After I saw the—well, after I found Dr. Shaw, he…he took me away. I never came back alive.”
Robert paused, the strangeness of the words washing over him. If someone had said anything like this more than three months ago, he probably would have sent them here, the psychiatric ward—not to purge quiddity, but for them to be admitted. Now, however, they almost seemed normal.
Almost.
“Got it,” he said, his hands closing on a worn blue folder, just as Dr. Mansfield had described. Robert pulled it out of the drawer. Curiosity overwhelmed him, and before they left the office in search of Shaw and his pet monster, he opened it.
He exhaled involuntarily as he flipped through the pages.
The top line of every page was a patient name, but the rest of the lines were all filled with the same sentence: There’s someone inside me…
Robert quickly flipped through to the last page, but he realized that it was torn out.
“Missing page?” he asked, not really expecting to find anything of any insight, or even different from the scrawling that filled the rest of the book.
But Dr. Mansfield’s face suddenly went dark, and Robert held the book up for the man to see.
“The last page?” the doctor asked softly.
Robert flipped the torn edge back and forth.
“Yeah, think so. Why?”
“Because, it—”
But another voice answered the question for him.
“—it was his page,” Dr. Shaw said.
Robert dropped the book and whipped the flashlight up to eye level, while at the same time Dr. Mansfield spun around to face the voice.
Andrew Shaw was standing in the doorway of the office, hands at his sides, blood dripping from his fingers. As both men watched in horror, he slowly snaked his hand into the pocket of his lab coat.
Robert started to breathe quickly, unsure of what to do next.
What if he pulls out a weapon? A scalpel? Can he cut me? Can he cut Dr. Mansfield? Would it matter?
So many questions ripped through his mind that he locked up.
But thankfully Andrew didn’t pull a weapon from his lab coat. Instead, he pulled a piece of paper.
“Andrew, you need to—”
Dr. Shaw stopped unraveling the paper and turned his gaze to Dr. Mansfield, his brow lowering.
“I told you to call me Dr. Shaw.”
Then he went back to unfolding the piece of paper.
“This is craziness…think about what you’re doing, Dr. Shaw. You were on a path to become a doctor—you were destined to help people, not harm them,” Dr. Mansfield pleaded.
Andrew’s expression went smug, and instead of answering, he read the paper instead.
“Patient #001, Dr. George Thomsen Mansfield. There’s someone inside me…”
Robert slowly moved the flashlight away from Andrew’s face as he continued to read that same sentence what seemed like dozens of times. He moved the beam of light back and forth around the man’s chest with simple, subtle movements, changing the angle ever so slightly. Although the man wasn’t completely solid, he wasn’t as transparent as James or Patricia Harlop had been, either.
Something is changing, Robert thought suddenly. And it has to do with the rift in the Marrow.
These weren’t the same quiddity…they were more real somehow.
More permanent.
Andrew finally finished reading, his expression proud as if he had just shared the most important medical discovery of the past century instead of just spouting gibberish.
“This…this isn’t helping people. What you did to me wasn’t helping. Neither was what you did to Justine, the others…you are supposed to help people,” Dr. Mansfield continued. “Please, just hand me the paper.”
Andrew turned to face the doctor, and for a brief second his expression went from smug to soft, sad even. It was clear to Robert in that moment that Dr. Mansfield was trying to appeal to Andrew, the other personality buried for all these years, and not to Dr. Shaw.
And to his untrained eyes, it appeared to be working.
When Dr. Shaw spoke next, his voice even seemed different.
“I just—I wanted to help people, Dr. Mansfield. To help people like me, people who were good, but who had someone else trapped in here.” The man raised a finger and tapped at his temple, leaving a bloody smudge at his hairline.
“Yes, yes, that’s right, Andrew. I know you wanted to help. That’s why I took you under my wing, remember?”
Andrew nodded subtly.
“I asked you to help me because I knew you were good…and because you were smart, too.”
Again, Andrew nodded.
“I just wanted to help…”
Dr. Mansfield stepped forward, intent on comforting the man who was on the verge of a breakdown, when Andrew slipped his left hand into the pocket of his lab coat. Just as Dr. Mansfield reached for him, Andrew leaned forward and put his right hand on the man’s shoulder.
Although Dr. Mansfield was unaware of what was happening, Robert could see it all with vivid clarity.
“No!” he shouted, but it was too late.
Dr. Shaw’s face broke into a lecherous grin as he slipped the scalpel from his pocket. Then he reared back and drove the glinting blade deep into Dr. Mansfield’s guts, twisting and turning it as it slid into his body.
“I told you when I killed you the first time,” Dr. Shaw hissed, “I am helping you.”
Dr. Mansfield gasped and tried to pull away, but Andrew’s grip on his shoulder and the scalpel held firm. Then the much stronger man, who Robert could have sworn appeared more solid than he had even just a few seconds ago, lifted his head skyward.
“George!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. A sinister grin formed on his lips as he turned back to Dr. Mansfield. “I’m going to enjoy killing you again, just like you’re gonna love your visit with the Goat.”
Chapter 36
Cal swore under his breath, and then glanced at Shelly. She was staring at him, her thick red lips mouthing the words, what the fuck?
“She saw me,” he whispered, “she fucking saw me.”
Shelly started to stand, but Cal encouraged her to sit with several aggressive gestures.
“He’s in there, too,” he said, eyes wide.
There was no need to specify who ‘he’ was—the expression in his face made this abundantly clear.
“What the fuck do we do? Do we—?”
They heard a beep, and the door suddenly started to open. Both Cal and Shelly froze.
“Dr. Shaw?” Justine asked tentatively through the three-inch gap.
Cal, still crouched, tried to make himself as small as possible. Relief washed over him when he realized that even though their eyes had met, she didn’t seem to have recognized him.
“Doctor? You—”
The door opened a little wider, and Justine stepped a foot into the hall. Cal tried to scoot away from her, but he was too slow and the toe of her worn sneaker bumped up against the crowbar.
“What’s going on?”
Justine looked down, and this time when their eyes met, there was no question that she knew who he was. For such a large, damaged woman, she mo
ved surprisingly quickly. It didn’t help that Cal’s legs were sore from squatting, either, and that he was leaning backward.
“George!” Justine screamed. “George, get the fuck out here!”
And then she pounced on Cal, and it was Cal’s turn to call for help.
“Shelly!” he yelped a split second before she landed on him.
Cal wasn’t one for exercise, health, and last but not least, fighting. So when he was confronted with a crazed two-hundred-pound psychopath bearing down on him, he did what anyone in his situation would have done. Instead of raising his arms, crowbar in hand, or trying to get out of the way, he attempted to catch her on his feet, and then fling her over his head.
He had seen it in a video game once, and it looked easy enough.
In real life, however, the result was a complete failure. Cal only got one leg up in time, and that wasn’t nearly enough to support Justine. She collapsed on top of him, her weight forcing the air from Cal’s lungs.
The nurse smelled foul, and as her hands came raining down on him, it was all he could do to turn his head to the side. Her nails raked deep into his cheek, immediately drawing blood. Cal tried to put his hands up to defend himself, but they were pinned beneath her chest and belly.
“Shelly!” he cried as Justine drove a hammer fist into the side of his face, speckling his vision with stars. In a desperate move, Cal lifted his hips and somehow managed to shift most of her weight toward the wall. Then he heard a click as the door to the operating room closed. At the same time, Shelly reared up, clasped both hands together, and raised them high over her head.
Cal closed his eyes in expectation of the massive blow.
A blow that never came.
Instead, he heard a dull ‘thunk’ and then felt all of Justine’s weight pile downat once. And then the air was again knocked out of him again.
Struggling to fill his lungs, Justine’s awful breath accosted him as her cheek came to rest on his own. Cal opened his mouth to scream, but before the sound could exit, blood from Justine spilled onto his face, causing him to gag and cough.
The Seventh Ward (The Haunted Book 2) Page 15
