by Tara Brown
When I got to the bottom, another heavy steel door greeted me. It had a slip of glass along the side, thin and dusty. It was exactly the sort of pane you would peek through only to find a bloodshot eye staring back at you.
I shivered and lifted onto my tiptoes, forcing myself to peer through the small window. Of course there were no eyes but there were flickering lights and a long gray corridor.
It couldn't have been creepier, unless there had been an eye.
My body quivered from the coolness in the air and absolute fear tearing through me, as I lifted my scarred hand to the handle and turned it.
The door didn't make a sound.
The hallway was silent.
My breath invaded the still space.
I let the door close on its own and leaned my back into it as it clicked into place. My imagination told me not to look back; the bloodshot eye was now on the other side of the window, locking me down here.
I hated the new me.
The hall wasn't as cold as I had expected but the eerie gray color made me shiver anyway.
Being brave or stupid or both, I took my first step into the hall.
Each of my next steps was forced as images filled my head.
Every one of them worse than the last.
Me screaming from inside a small dark box.
The girl with the blue eyes cutting me.
Her voice taunting me.
All my shame washing down, raining on me until it filled up the space in the box and tried to drown me in the dark.
My feet stopped.
My legs cramped.
The full effect of her torment hit me there, alone in the creepy hallway.
Cold sweat and involuntary shudders struck all at once.
But I fought back. I forced a step and then another. Tears threatened me, but I threatened back. I didn’t know what I would fight with, but I was determined not to be this pathetic mess.
Like a zombie or Frankenstein, I reached for the knob of the one room with a small window in the door but no label saying janitorial or laundry. The cold metal made me flinch, but I still tried to turn the handle, to no avail. The door was locked.
Something about it defeated me.
It was more than a locked door. It was her winning again.
All that bravery was for nothing, maybe.
The tears won and my knees lost, letting my sobbing body crumple to the floor. I pressed my hand against the door and lowered my head, as if willing the door or God or something to work in my favor.
“If you stop crying, I’ll open that.” A soft voice startled me but I didn’t turn around.
I closed my eyes and prepared for the blow that would knock me out. I prepared to end up back in that box.
“Please stop crying.” His voice wasn't threatening. In fact, I recognized it.
I forced my eyes open to find the guy with the glasses poking his head out from the shadows at the end of the hallway. He didn't smile but he didn't try to come near me either. He just sat there, staring.
“Seriously. I can pick that lock. Do you want me to?”
I didn’t think. I just nodded. I should have run or screamed or told him to go screw himself.
But I didn’t.
I wasn’t sure if it was his dorky expression convincing me to trust him or the fact I needed in the room, or just that we’d shared an oddly comfortable silent meal.
A suspicion popped up. “Did Linds send you?” It wasn’t a stretch that Lindsey had assumed I’d fail at this. It would also explain how I knew him. He looked like one of her dorky friends who hung at that disgusting little pit of a coffeehouse. Not that I ever went there.
“No,” he answered flatly as he got up. His steps were slow and deliberate, but I still found myself shuffling back from the door to give him room. He moved like the horse trainers in the arena when a wild horse came in to be broken. I thought it was because of the conquered expression on my face, but after a moment I wondered if the way he moved and spoke were just normal for him. He did things slowly, carefully.
Without speaking again, he walked to the door and lifted his hands from his pockets. Something flashed with a glint of silver and before I’d exhaled once, the door was open.
He stepped back, offering me his hand. The silver thing was gone, as if magic had stolen it away. His expression didn't change when he noticed how I stared at his hand instead of taking it. He turned and walked into the room, staying to one side and letting me get up at my own pace.
I grabbed at the wall and lifted myself, straightening my pajamas and hair, as if that would save me from the state I was in. Not that it mattered. If he was one of Lindsey’s friends, he was used to girls who looked like they hadn’t showered in weeks. Hobo was sort of a trend amongst the coffeehouse slackers.
“Thanks.” I nodded as I entered the dimly lit room, desperate to reach the inner siren I tried to be with boys. “I’m Sierra, by the way. Sorry I never introduced myself at dinner.” Of course he hadn’t either.
“I know who you are.” He didn’t sound impressed and he didn’t offer me his name.
“Cool.” I slid my fingers along the table and both our eyes lowered to the scars on the back of my hand. I wanted to drag my hand back but I didn’t. I needed to own the scars, as if they were deliberate. That would make them cooler than they were. “What are you doing down here, creeping around in the dark? Is this where you meet your girlfriend?” I asked it meaner than I had meant to but laughed at the end of the question to hide the regret in my tone.
“No.” He offered nothing. No shame, no humor, no emotion. He was empty.
“Are you crazy?” The question fell from my mouth.
“No more so than you are. Possibly less.” His dark-blue eyes flickered on me for a moment before he glanced at the file cabinets. “Was there a reason you wanted in this room?”
“Why are you here, in Silver Hills?” I couldn’t stop myself. My inner filter rarely kicked in as anything but hindsight.
He ignored me and walked to the filing cabinet, again flashing the small metal lock-picking thing. A couple of twists of his hand and the cabinet popped open. But he didn’t do the typical guy thing. He didn’t flash me a grin or gloat or even look at me. He opened it and started rifling. “What are we looking for?”
It dawned on me then that there was a chance he was the dark-haired girl’s boyfriend or somehow part of all this. “I can do the rest alone. You don’t have to stay here. I’m fine now.” I scanned the doorway, scared the evil little bitch was lurking outside. Maybe she had sent him to make me think I was safe so she could tear the carpet out from under me again.
Oh God.
“Sierra?” He stepped closer and before I realized it, he was standing near me again. He reached forward, resting a large hand on my forearm where I was gripping my skin so tightly my knuckles were completely white. The pain in my arm took a second to register after his touch lessened the grip. “Despite whatever’s going on in your head right now, I won’t let anyone hurt you.” It was the second time he’d stopped me from gripping by touching me. And again I didn’t shy away from his touch.
I believed everything he said. It was illogical and ridiculous. I was that dumb girl who saw the wholesome look on the guy’s face and nodded along like a hypnosis patient. The whole thing nauseated me because there was no way he was just here to help me. I took a step back from him. “I’m not crazy.” The words left my lips like a whisper. They sounded crazy, matching the welts on my forearms from me clenching my own skin.
But he didn’t mock me or appear confused. He nodded. “I know. I don’t think you’re crazy.” He glanced back at the files. “But this room is creepy. This basement is worse. So whatever you’re looking for, please find it so we can leave.” He said it like he had a plan.
“Are you working with the girl, the one who cut me?”
“No.” He shook his head but he didn’t ask me about the girl. He either knew or he didn’t need to know. “I’m with you.”
/> “Why?” I asked before I really registered what he was saying. He was with me?
“Because I am.” He nodded his head at the door. “I’ll wait outside while you look. There’s no one in here or down here, but I won’t leave you.” He didn’t linger or stare at my lips. His eyes never wavered from mine. He was a breed of boy I’d never encountered. He was a gentleman.
When his back blocked the door I snapped out of my little panic attack and turned to the cabinet, rifling through it to find Lucinda or Wentworth but nothing was there. Doing a second lap of the files I glanced at the other cabinets and then him. “Can you unlock them all?”
“Yup.” He answered but didn’t move.
“Can you do it now?”
“Yup.”
“Are you being weird on purpose?”
“Nope.” He didn't sound like he was and yet he wasn't moving.
“Seriously, come open these.”
“Say please.” He continued to stare at the frikkin’ wall opposite the doorway.
“Please.” The word tasted like venom.
“Okay.” He turned and walked to the cabinets, picking each of them faster than I could sigh impatiently twice. “This will go faster if you just trust me and tell me what you’re looking for.”
“Why should I?”
His lips turned into something that resembled a smile but not a whole one. It was joined by a chuckle I suspected was at me and not with me. “If I wanted to do something terrible to you I would have done it before we got into this room. Who else is in the hallway? We’re alone down here. I could have killed you already several times. Instead, I’ve picked locks and offered help.” He laughed but I cringed, not even inwardly. “I just mean I’m here for you, I swear.” He lifted his hand like a Boy Scout and I believed every bit of it. Something about the nerdy Boy Scout thing was doing it for me. I contemplated kissing him for half a second as I let my eyes roam his face, noting he was even cuter than I’d thought. He had great lips. He was sort of hot.
I sighed.
“Sierra, what are we looking for?”
“Lucinda Wentworth.”
“When was she here?”
“I don’t know, like ten years ago. She’s twenty something. So maybe like ten to fifteen years ago.”
“That’s it?” He cocked a dark eyebrow when I nodded. “Wow, not a lot to go on.”
“She had a lobotomy.”
He swallowed hard at that little tidbit. “Shit.”
“Right. Her parents put her here after the lobotomy. I need her file.”
“Okay.” He shrugged and went to work, searching the cabinet I had already checked.
“I looked in that one.”
“Double checking.”
“Whatever.” I sighed and headed for the next cabinet.
We searched, double and triple checking each other’s searching until I was starting to see double. “There’s nothing here. They must not have kept a record for her.”
“That’s weird. Especially if she was a minor.” He no sooner got the words out and something in the hallway made a noise. It sounded far off but it was still a noise.
He grabbed my arm, dragging me to the doorway. He peeked out quickly and then closed the door silently.
“What is it?” My heart raced and sweat broke out across my forehead as he calmly pressed us both against the wall beside the door. The flickering glow from the hall shone into the room, making an inconstant rectangle of light on the floor and cabinets.
“Shhh.” His soft breath tickled the top of my head as he held me against the wall, my chest pressing into his ribs. I hadn’t noticed how tall he was until this moment.
Through his arm, I watched as the rectangle of light flickered with the hall lights.
I inhaled sharply as a shadow slowly walked into the rectangle. It looked like a man’s shape. He stayed there, turning and peering into the room. He was right beside us.
My mouth dried. My heart pounded. I closed my eyes, erasing the sight of the shadow man. When I opened them again he was gone. The rectangle was empty.
I exhaled slowly but we didn’t move.
“We need to go,” I whispered.
The guy with the glasses lifted a finger slowly, holding it to his lips.
His eyes stared into mine, calming me.
After a moment, just as I started to relax, the shadow man stepped back into the rectangle. The handle of the door wiggled, clicking back and forth. Each strike of the metal handle against the lock was like lightning hitting me.
I tensed but the guy pinning me to the wall didn’t. He just held me to him.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to pee or pass out so I closed my eyes again.
We stayed here, me distracting myself with the strangely attractive scent of his deodorant and laundry soap and him pinning me to a wall.
He moved back a touch, peeking out the window slowly. My face flushed then. It hadn’t when we were first pushed together, but with him being far enough back for me to see his face, I was suddenly embarrassed. Me.
He stepped close again, tapped his long pointer finger against his glasses for a moment and then paused. “What about if they put her under a different name, to save the family embarrassment?”
“What are you talking about? Is there still someone in the hall?” Maybe he did belong in the crazy house. “We need to get out of here.”
“No, he’s gone. I heard the hall door a few minutes ago.”
“Maybe he just closed the door so we’d move again and then he could find us. They do that.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who do?”
“People looking for you. They trick you into getting comfortable.”
His brow knit. “We can wait one more minute.” The look in his eyes, like he was seeing me for the first time, made me want to cry. The damage might have been lost on him before but it was there now.
“No. You’re right. He’s probably gone. What were you saying?—what if they catalogued Lucinda under a different name?”
“Yeah, just to stop anyone from seeing her family name,” he whispered.
“Well, that doesn’t help. How will we ever find her if her name is different?” I relaxed for the first time since leaving my room. Not because I was safe but because I was becoming quite tired from the adrenaline highs and lows of the last half hour. I slumped against the final cabinet and yawned. “I’m exhausted. If that person comes back we’re going to get in trouble. You know what they’re going to think we were doing in here.” I shook my head, hating that everyone would think it because it was something I would do. I was the only girl who would do it in a mental institute.
“Snooping?”
“That’s not what I meant.” I watched his eyes to see if he was playing dumb on purpose, but he just shrugged and looked at the cabinets again.
“Tell me more about that Lucinda girl.”
“I don't know a lot. She was some psychopath who killed cats and gave babies poison. She killed a nurse and maybe other people.”
“Killed a nurse? I think I saw something in”—he looked at the cabinets for a second before pointing—“that one.” He hurried over and rifled frantically for a moment before lifting a file. “Lucy W. She was thirteen and a patient here thirteen years ago. Brown hair, psychotic episodes. Brought in for paranoia, killing cats, and giving a baby a bottle of bleach. She swore up and down that her doctors were lying and she hadn’t done any of the things they’d accused her of. She said some girl cut her, and she hadn’t attempted to kill herself or take the pills. She claimed she never tried to hurt anyone, even after she was blamed for killing a nurse.” He lifted his gaze and chills crept down my spine.
“Holy shit.” I went from exhausted to sobering fear. “She said she was innocent? She said a girl cut her?”
“Yeah.” He nodded blankly, clearly not seeing the connection to me. “It says she believed she hadn’t done any of it and was being set up. She begged for her parents to come and see her and continu
ed to be delusional. The doctors transferred her to another facility. She went into a coma for a while after some experimentation was done on her at the other facility. Just says antipsychotics were used, no surgery. She was brought back here afterward, but it says she was calm and peaceful from then on.” He winced. “Lobotomies do make people peaceful.”
“So she said someone had done all those things to her?” I took the file from him and held it close to my chest but that didn't stop my hands from shaking. “I have something to tell you.”
He narrowed his dark-blue gaze. “Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow. We should get to bed before whoever came down here comes back. You look like you might fall asleep standing, and I don’t want to get caught here either.”
“Okay.” I hugged the file, wondering what the hell had just happened. I had gone from believing I was the only victim of this place to wondering if there was any truth in the fact Lucinda might have been innocent. What better reason to bring me here and do this to me, than to show me how it felt to be innocent and accused of something? Especially, if she was crazy.
I walked ahead of him in a daze, letting him close the door behind us.
“Zachary,” he said when we got to the stairs. “My name is Zachary Finn.”
“Sierra Casey.”
“I know that.” His lips toyed with a grin. “Everyone knows who you are, Sierra.” He wasn’t mocking me. He was seriously letting me know.
“Have we met before?” I asked, scared of the answer.
“Not in real life.” He was officially the weirdest boy I’d ever met.
“Can I call you Finn? I like that name better than Zachary. I actually know a couple of Zachs who are total douche nozzles.” I preferred shortening everyone’s name and had already crossed a Zach off my list of dudes. One in particular wasn't a very nice boy.
“As you wish.” He walked ahead of me, opening the door to the main floor for me. I paused in the entrance, again contemplating how to be around him without flirting or kissing or attempting to make him want me. But his eyes stayed on mine. They didn’t dip to the flimsy material separating us. They never lowered to my lips the way mine did to his.
“Who are you?”
“Your friend, I swear.” He said it in a way that I believed him, but he didn’t offer me anything else. No proof or explanation. He just said it.
