I raced to the front entry of the ward and stood at the base of the cement stairs, gazing up toward the blocked door. A heavy sadness weighted down on my shoulders. It filled my neck, and my arms drooped from the burden. It was the same feeling that overpowered me the first time I stood in front of this ward. I knew Kaitlin had felt it that time, too.
She stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
“We’re leaving,” she called.
“I can’t,” I stated.
I had no idea why I needed to go back in there. The pull was powerful, like the ward was calling to me, begging me to come back in. Somehow, I couldn’t resist its demand.
It was like it controlled me. Owned me.
I stepped onto the first crumbling stair.
Kaitlin yelled, “Stop!”
I took a second step. Then leaped up several more and planted my feet on the landing. In a swift effort, I pressed my fingers around the boards that sealed the entry. I pulled, searching for weaknesses. Anywhere there might be some give.
My focus was sharp. It held one purpose—gaining reentry into the Excited Ward.
My fingernails broke, splinters slicing into my nail beds. I kicked at the bottom of the boards, trying to loosen their hold.
Then my shoulder pulled back. Resisting, I fought to get back to my mission.
“Grace. Stop.” Braden’s voice pressed into my spiraling mind. “Stop.” He pulled on me again. “What are you doing?”
The confusion in his voice pulled my attention away from the door, and I studied his concerned face. His eyes examined mine like he was searching for me, but I wasn’t there. I returned to the door, feeling its pull for me to continue my efforts at gaining entry. My mind ran frantic again with the pursuit.
But Braden continued to pull on me. This time, with more force.
“What the fuck, Grace?” he seethed into my ear.
He lifted me off my feet, then carried me down the steps. My first instinct was to fight him. To resist with all my efforts. He was trying to stop me from the one thing that mattered. He was the enemy.
I squirmed and kicked, yanking my shoulders to release from his grasp. But he held firm, determined to remove me from the area.
Then, I stopped resisting. Collapsing against Braden, I noted the shock in all of their eyes. Even Kaitlin. Her jaw hung open.
Something happened to me. It was like I’d lost my sanity for a moment. And it scared me.
It was the ward.
The ward messed with my head. It made me crave it like a junkie, and it was all I could think about. Like insidious poison, it crept through me. Haunting me with visions of that girl. Emma. Tormenting me with its secrets. Empty rooms full of secrets.
It wanted something from me.
It needed something from me.
And it had a firm hold.
I needed to fight…
To keep my sanity.
Humiliation washed over me as I kept a close eye on Braden’s car in my side mirror. He insisted on following us home, probably to be sure I didn’t decide to turn around and go back. Kaitlin drove toward my house in silence. Her tense jaw said enough.
She turned the car onto my street and exhaled, releasing the breath she’d been holding since leaving the asylum.
“I felt it, too,” she whispered.
“What?” I whipped my head to the side.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner,” she said. “I was too scared.” She parked the car in front of my house, then set her full attention to me. “It just freaked me out to see you react like that when it was exactly what I wanted to do, too. Grace…” She hesitated. “I want to go back inside, too. Why is that?” Her voice cracked.
I twisted in my seat toward her, blinking my eyes before they bugged out of my head.
“Kaitlin, there’s something there. It’s like it needs us to find it.” I watched Braden’s car pull in behind us and spoke faster. “I’m scared. But I feel like we need to go back.”
“Me too,” she agreed. “I don’t want to feel this way, though. I just wish this would stop.”
“But the cemetery,” I added. “It’s there somewhere. Don’t you at least want to find that?”
She nodded her head.
Then my door flew open, and I jumped a mile.
“Come on.” Braden reached for my arm. “Time to get inside to rest. You keep forgetting you’re concussed, and you’re acting like everything’s fine. You need to heal, Grace. You, too, Kaitlin.” His voice reprimanded me like a slap in the face. “You’ll cause permanent damage if you don’t give yourself time to recover. I mean it.”
I pulled my arm away from him. “You sound like my dad.”
The comment held sick irony since I had no memory of my dad’s voice, and it only added to my annoyance.
“I don’t care,” he huffed. “I’m serious, Grace. This has gone too far. You just need to chill. Don’t go back there again. Not until you’re healed.” He paused. “I’d prefer you never go back actually.”
“I have to go back,” I mumbled as I climbed out of the car.
He gripped the side of the door until his knuckles turned white. His lips quivered as if trying to hold his next words in, but then they escaped.
“I’ll tell your mother,” he stated with averted eyes.
I shoved him out of my way and stomped onto my front lawn, mumbling under my breath.
“Don’t you dare, Braden,” I hissed. “Or we’re done.”
His shoulders sank like I’d knocked the wind out of him. He turned back toward his car where Nick sat. Nick rolled his eyes.
My mind jumped back to Kaitlin and everything she just told me, and my heart rate quadrupled. I just wanted time to talk with her. To figure out exactly what we were feeling. And what was happening to us.
I watched Braden shift his weight from one side to the other, like he didn’t know what to do next.
“Fine,” I said, suddenly feeling bad for him. “We’ll rest. We’ll take a break. Happy?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I’ll check on you later.”
I dropped my head back and groaned.
And with that, he dropped into his car and peeled away, scattering gravel out from his tires.
Kaitlin turned to me, baring her teeth. “He’s pissed.”
“Yeah, I know.” I followed his car with my eyes until it was out of sight. “Wanna go back?”
Her face paled, and she studied the car keys in her hand.
Then my front door smashed open.
“Grace Frances!” My mother’s voice pierced through my heart.
Kaitlin chuckled at the sound of my full name flying from my mother’s lips. She knew this meant I was in deep shit.
“Where the hell have you been?” Mom shouted. “Get into this house, right now.”
We walked across the lawn toward the front porch. I looked back at the driveway, confused. Her car must have been parked in the garage. I’d assumed she wasn’t home, and the shock of her presence sent a sour taste into my mouth.
Her hand lifted, stopping Kaitlin in her tracks. “Sorry, Kaitlin. It’s time for you to go home. Grace needs to rest.”
My blood boiled. Did she think I was an infant?
“Mom, it’s fine,” I protested. “Kaitlin can stay.” Anger seethed through me at my mother’s attempt to separate the two of us. “No,” I shot back, holding my ground.
But her face clamped into a tight scowl. Her lips pressed into a thin line as her eyes narrowed to slits. Anger reddened her face, causing a dark blotch to appear on her forehead. It looked like it throbbed from the pressure of her rage. It turned deep purple, like a port-wine stain.
I hardly recognized her. Her face took on the appearance of someone different. Horrified, I gaped.
I turned to Kaitlin to clear my vision. As soon as I saw her similar reaction to my mother’s transformation, my stomach churned.
Kaitlin’s head shook as she stepped away.
I bent over a
nd held my knees. Then the retching came. I puked right onto the slate walkway, sending splatters everywhere.
I spat into the grass, raising my head. My mother’s face had returned to normal as she jumped toward me to help.
“I’ve got her,” she said to Kaitlin. “You head home now.” She waved her hand toward Kaitlin’s car.
And then she led me into the house against every screaming nerve in my body.
After I stumbled into the house, I went straight for the bathroom to brush my teeth. The earlier trembling from my anger had now turned to quaking shudders. My shoulders jolted in spasms as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.
Dark circles had formed under my eyes, beyond the natural shadow from my flaking mascara. Staring at the golden tones in the blue of my irises, I rubbed under each eye to try to improve the situation, then ran my fingers through my hair. I was a mess. But mostly on the inside.
“Are you okay in there?” Mom’s voice scratched through the door, making me jump.
“I’ll be out in a sec,” I mumbled.
If I could, I’d stay in the bathroom for the rest of the night if that meant I didn’t have to see her again. It sucked I felt that way about my own mother, but honestly, she forced it. She acted more like a warden than a mom. Her emotional detachment had been so painful my whole adolescence, and now it was over. I was grown. She’d missed it.
And I wasn’t about to let her get involved at this point.
My mind jumped to Kaitlin. It was critical we communicated immediately. We had so much to talk about. And with Mom as my roadblock, I needed to smooth things over and convince her I was okay.
Was I?
Nope.
Not at all.
But she couldn’t help me, so there was no need to involve her.
I cracked the bathroom door open and stepped out. She waited on the couch in the living room.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Yes. I think I just got a little dizzy,” I said, rubbing my head. “I’m just going to lie down and rest.”
“Just a minute,” she said. “I want to talk to you. Sit.” She pointed to the armchair across from her. “You are not taking your recovery seriously, and we need to discuss your plan for healing.”
I pressed my eyes shut and rubbed them, then sat in the chair. I glanced at Mom, then focused into the dining room to avoid her glare. Without warning, my body twitched. I slapped my hand over my mouth as I stared at an old, decrepit wheelchair by the table. I gasped in shock. It was the same broken chair I’d crashed into in the wet, rotting hall of the Excited Ward.
“Where the hell did that come from?” My voice shook through my hand, which covered my mouth. Tears streamed from my eyes in terror.
Mom jumped off the couch, gazing wildly into the dining room.
“What are you talking about?” She whirled on me with piercing eyes.
I leaned to look around her, ready to ream her for not seeing it, but all that was there was the wooden armchair at the head of the dining room table.
I blinked in disbelief. My mind was playing tricks on me again. It must be exhaustion. And it was probably time for me to admit that my brain injury was rearing its ugly head again. This time, instead of intense rewiring, it was now hallucinations. I’d take the savant symptoms over hallucinations any day.
“Sorry.” I brushed away my tears before she saw them. “The light hit the table funny, and I was sure I saw that old photo album I hate. I thought you were going to torture me with those evil portraits again.”
Mom smirked for a moment, thinking of how much I hated my bucked teeth and bangs from second grade.
“You’re rather jumpy,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. I just need to lie down.”
“Well, I don’t want you going out anymore. For a few days at least. You need to follow doctor’s orders, and I’m the one to enforce them.” She stood over me now, casting her shadow like a blockade.
“Yeah. We’ll see,” I mumbled.
“We will see, Grace Frances. You’ll do as I say.”
“Mom. Just stop.” My fists squeezed tight. “I’ll rest now and see how I feel in the morning.”
“You’ll do as you’re told, young lady,” she demanded.
Rage built up in me, causing my face to heat up. It must have been blazing red. As I lifted my eyes to hers, red lines filled my vision. At first, I assumed I was seeing the color from my anger, but then my focus landed on the wall behind her. Large red letters scrawled along the wallpaper in spray-painted words that said, “HELP US!”
I shot up to my feet.
They were the same words I’d seen in the Excited Ward.
My heart rate beat out of my chest as my gaze moved farther down the wall to the final word.
In bright red, it shouted, “RUN!”
Chapter 13
My mother stared at me like I was the enemy. Her judging eyes scoured every inch of me as if she were searching for evidence of who I truly was. And based off the grimace that twisted her face, she didn’t like what she saw.
“What’s wrong with you?” she snarled.
I lifted a shaking finger to point to the wall behind her. “Don’t you see it?” My voice trembled as I stepped away. “Can’t you see?” I got louder.
She turned for a second, then whirled on me again. “See what? What the hell are you talking about? You’re talking gibberish. Just like your father!” And her hand flew to her mouth in an attempt to catch the words before they hit the air.
My vision zoomed in, directly on her face. Her words had knocked the air out of me. Disbelief filled me at her callous reference to my father. She knew that was a vulnerable place to go, and she’d used it against me.
Swallowing, I glanced at the wall again. The red letters were gone, and I could only imagine she was right about me. Gibberish, she called it.
But I knew what it actually was.
It was the ward.
It had followed me home.
It had taken hold of a part of me deep within the hidden shutters of my mind.
“What do you mean?” My eyes narrowed, and I scowled. “How am I just like my father? Tell me.”
She stumbled to the couch, then plopped down as if exhausted by the battle that was only just beginning. Her head shook as she exhaled for miles.
“He saw things, too,” she murmured.
“W-what?” I stuttered. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t you swear at me,” she shot back.
“What are you saying?” I pressed.
“He saw things. Said things,” she started. “He sounded crazy. Making predictions and having grandiose ideas.”
Bewildered, I froze. I’d never heard so much about my father in my entire lifetime. And now, in two seconds, I was hearing that he was a babbling crazy person.
“Predictions of what? What happened to him? Where is he?” I begged.
She dropped her eyes to her lap, wringing her hands.
“Crazy talk. From the moment you were born,” she said. “Made everyone uncomfortable. He’d lost his mind, Grace.”
I pulled back from her in shock. How could she speak with such disrespect about him? Without any emotion or feelings?
“What happened to him?” I repeated.
She hesitated, but then said, “We needed to protect you from him. He had to be kept away from you.”
“Where is he?” I pressed.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “They sent him to the Blackwood State Hospital.” She paused. “And he never came back.”
A high-pitched ringing in my ears made me temporarily deaf. All of my senses morphed into a blur of cotton fog.
The Blackwood State Hospital? The asylum?
My father had spent time there. It couldn’t be. How could he have been so close when I thought he was so far away?
I fell back into my chair, wishing for it to absorb me into oblivion.
If my father had spent time at t
he asylum, maybe that was why it was familiar to me. All the strange feelings that overwhelmed me on the grounds… maybe I’d been there before.
“Did I ever visit him there?” I asked in a small voice.
Her head shot up in confusion. “What? No. I would never let you see him in that wretched place. He was dead to us when he went away.”
Her heartless reply shot rage through me. She’d cut him out of my life with no regard for his wishes or even mine.
My hands flew to my hair, and I pulled on it. “We abandoned him?” I screamed.
“No. He abandoned us,” she shouted back. “He lost his mind and left us alone to survive on our own.”
I couldn’t believe the twisted words I was hearing. She had put her typical spin on the situation to make us out to be the victims. My stomach churned as sour sickness returned. If only I could purge this truth out of me. There was no way I could live with it in my soul.
“So where is he now?” I begged, desperate for more information.
“He died there, Grace.” She paused. “A long time ago.”
“No,” I cried.
No. Closing my eyes, I fought the pain of sorrow that gouged at my chest. I never even had the chance to help him. To save him. Or to even know him.
Though, somehow, I’d never felt closer to him than in that moment. It was the first time I’d ever actually felt his true essence. His love for me.
I’d walked on the same grounds as my father. At the place where he drew his last breath. Alone.
My head felt like it was splitting down the middle.
“I can’t handle this,” I cried. “I don’t know what to do with it.” I paced the floor, still tugging at my hair. “Why did you never tell me before?”
“I was afraid,” she whimpered. “Afraid you would be like him.” Her voice cracked. “If you didn’t know, then maybe you would be okay, I thought. But now, now you’re scaring me with your strange behavior.”
“Oh my God. Strange behavior? What the hell do you expect?” White-hot anger blasted through me. “I’ve been in an accident. I have a head injury. And now you tell me this? Of course it will be strange.”
“No. Seeing things that aren’t there…” she said. “That’s strange. And that’s what happened to him, too.”
The Shuttered Ward Page 11
