I was disappointed, thus, that my case solving gusto came to a halt the next night. I found him despondent, staring blankly at the corner of the room. The drawings were gone. After taking his medicine, he went back to his bed, facing away from me. He didn’t even say a word.
“Are you okay?” I asked, disappointed that there would be no more clues.
“You didn’t take them,” he responded. The icy silence filled the room between us.
“Take what?”
He didn’t turn to look at me, still facing the wall. “Them.”
I tried to engage him, but there was nothing left to say. I left 5B confused—and angry at myself. I was searching for logic in a man whose mind had long since failed to be logical. What did I expect to gain? Still, at break, I asked Anna what had happened to his drawings.
“He got angry this morning, I guess. Shredded the pictures and started eating them. He said something about how you didn’t take them home. If he keeps showing this unnatural attachment to you, we might have to limit your contact with him. Wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” she announced.
My stomach lurched. I kept my face neutral, but I knew there was no way I was avoiding 5B. I was the potential answer. No one else would take the time. I could figure out what was going on with him.
Maybe it was loneliness. I hadn’t taken time to process what it was like leaving home and starting over in a new town with no connection. Maybe it was that I felt like I had some making up to do. Regardless, I harbored an inexplicable and perhaps even bizarre pull to him, like I was meant to help him. After all, he did say they told him I was coming. And odd as it sounded, a part of me perhaps wanted, no needed, to believe it was true. I needed to keep the hope alive that I still had purpose in the crazy, big world.
When break ended, I was sent to retrieve linens from the basement’s laundry room, a spot of the asylum I hadn’t yet visited. I was in the back corner of the musty basement room pulling out dry towels and sheets considering 5B’s antics when I heard a crash further back. Driven forward by curiosity but also fearful of finding a huge rat or another one of Redwood’s lost souls, I crept forward into the darkness. I pulled out my phone to use the light, shining it about.
Sitting on a stool in the back corner, a small figure with pigtails faced the wall.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” Panic rose. Had someone left a door unlocked? Had she wandered away during activity time? I took a step forward, her red hair shining in my flashlight.
I reached a hand out to touch her shoulder, but her head darted to the left, her neck turning at an odd angle that stopped me in my step. My light shined on her face, if one could call it that. It was blackened as if decayed, her skin dripping. Her nose was flattened to her face, her whole body distorted. Deep gouges covered her body, and her head wobbled and bobbled on top of it. Her head flapped wildly back, blackish blood congealed.
“Come on, what room are you in?” I ignored all rational thought that this girl couldn’t possibly be alive. I would have to ask Anna what happened to the poor thing, see what floor she was on.
The figure walked toward me slowly, creeping through the darkened, musty room. There was an inexplicable haze around her, a thick fog that appeared transcendent. I’d never seen my flashlight cast that sort of glow, almost like a movie. I tried not to look directly at her face, the red braids framing her in a graceful way that only brought more attention to the horror of her. She wore a yellow dress, a beaming, neon brightness in the spotlight of my flashlight.
She stopped a foot away from me, raised a hand, and her bent, crooked finger pointed at me. The eyes, bloody and protruding, somehow managed to glare. My heart raced, my stomach dropping again. I could no longer deny it in my mind. This wasn’t a resident, not a current one.
“Who are you?” I asked on a whim, as if it would be sensical for the being to answer me. Still, the mind clings to reason when faced with impossible shreds of craziness.
She did answer me, but with a shriek instead of words. A ringing thumped into my skull like an anvil hitting a bell. The noise was at a decibel that shredded every fiber of my body. I wondered if there was some sort of a natural disaster happening, if the whole place was coming down. I slammed my hands against my ears, but it only intensified the sound. My phone’s flashlight beamed at another wall, the little girl now out of my sight. This terrified me even more, so I pulled a hand away from my right ear to shine the light back. I fought through the pain, my eyes squinting to search for her.
But she was gone. I flashed the light all about the room, looking for the girl, but there was no sign of her. After a long moment, the noise finally stopped. Shaken, I dashed from the basement room, heading to the nearby elevator and pounding on the buttons. Tears and terror rendered me incapable of processing a thing, incapable of functioning, in truth. My shaking hands and sinking stomach made me feel woozy.
Another nurse, an elderly gentleman, was in the elevator when the doors opened.
“What happened?” I asked, breathing heavily.
He stared, confused. “What?”
“That noise? Did you hear it?” I choked out the words between gasps for air.
He studied me, looking very directly at my badge
